


West of the Moon, East of the Sun

by BlueMaple



Series: Harry Potter and the Road Not Taken [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst, BAMF Neville, Cross-Dimensional Portals, Do over - Freeform, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Hobbit References, Intrigue, Mystery, Prequel, Prophecy, Runes, Sequel, Temporal Mechanics, The Boy With Kaleidoscope Eyes, The Strange Familiar, Time Travel, Warding, Young Angry Harry, animagi, dragons!, obscurials, solace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-11 03:39:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10454145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMaple/pseuds/BlueMaple
Summary: A story of a Project, a portrait, and one small boy with the heart, courage and desperation to take a very, very large leap of faith.Episode One/prequel to "The Road Not Taken" Series (The Boy With Kaleidoscope Eyes, The Strange Familiar, Solace, The Longest River).In Which Nine-Year-Old Neville Frank Longbottom Sets Forth on an Adventure for the Ages.





	1. Leap of Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Big Nev is Canon!Neville.  
> Big Harry is Canon!Harry.  
> Frankie Alistair Augustine Longbottom is Big Nev's son (not Canon, but then JK Rowling hasn't written Neville's life to the point where he was born, so I feel no shame there).  
> Stella Greengrass Longbottom is Frankie's wife. She is the third daughter of Canon!Daphne Greengrass.  
> The tradition of Solace is entirely my own invention. It doesn't mess with any of Rowling's canon plot points as of the end of The Cursed Child, though, so again. No shame.
> 
> Enjoy! :)
> 
> Nine-year-old Neville Longbottom is referred to in the sequels to this novella as Little Nev, and has, as of the beginning of The Boy With Kaleidoscope Eyes, been Sent Off On Holiday with Little Harry.

**_Longbottom Manor_ **

**_Half Past Midnight_ **

**_March 20, 1990_ **

 

Nine-year-old Neville Frank Longbottom perched, fully dressed, on the edge of the bathtub in his private loo, eyes fixed on the small portrait in his hand as he waited for the call that would trigger the cross-dimensional portal leading him to a parallel universe.

He'd considered, at first, wearing his dress robes for the occasion. It only seemed appropriate since he was heading off to a version of his world that would be celebrating, even as he arrived, his aged counterpart, Big Nev Longbottom's, funeral. In the end, though, the nine-year-old _de facto_ Head of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Longbottom had decided that that probably wasn't a good idea. Big Nev wasn't _really_ dead, after all. As he'd explained the second of the three times he and Neville had talked, his soul would be shuffling off its hundred-thirty-six-year-old mortal coil alright, but it would not be Continuing On afterward. Rather, it would be Crossing Over, passing Neville himself as they swapped places in their respective universes. Neville, of course, would be taking both his own mortal coil and soul with him, but the magically-regenerated-and chronologically-revisited body that the just-deceased Big Nev planned to inhabit while he was visiting Neville's world would be in a lot of trouble with Gran if it couldn't explain where its St. Roux had got  to.

So instead, and once Neville had confirmed his acceptance of Big Nev's invitation to join The Project, he ordered Dolly, Longbottom Manor's Head House-Elf, to go out and buy him his traveling clothes from the second-hand shops on Diagon Alley.

"Trousers, shirt, robe, and shoes," Neville instructed her as he'd handed off all of his small savings. "Nothing too fancy, but as nice as you can find for the money. And don't you go telling Gran either, _or_ the other house-elves, or Uncle Algie or _anybody_ . Not with words, not with notes, not with hand signals or ear wiggles or metaphors or analogies or _anything_ . If you do, I just might be buying _you_ clothes to be going on with, once I've saved up more money anyway. And no, before you ask, I'm not going to tell you why I want them. It's private."

Dolly sniffed at him at that, but her magics did bind her to the direct order. She cracked out and returned within the hour, tucking the items under his bed as requested. They were quite satisfactory, Neville thought, if all done up, in obvious reflection of the house-elf's opinion of his sneaky methods, in Slytherin green. It wasn't exactly an insult, mind, but there could be no misreading the metaphor there either. Dolly had come to Longbottom from House Malfoy, where every elf was trained by their master, Lucius Malfoy, in the (surprisingly useful) Art and Science of Applied Metaphors. Lucius Malfoy and his wife were Neville's unofficial godparents, and they were both so sneakily Slytherin  that they practically _bled_ green.

Or at least, they were good at _pretending_ to be Slytherins, though it all came out to the same thing in the end when one thought about it. The game there would be up in a shot, mind, if anyone (Lucius Malfoy included) ever realized what his wife's Animagus form was. Neville was fairly sure that he was the only person alive who knew that Narcissa Black Malfoy was an Animagus at all,  and that was only because he'd caught her out. Auntie Niss, as her godson called her, had been watching him while Gran was at an evening church meeting a year and a half ago now, and the just-turned eight-year-old boy had come down the stairs to fetch himself up a glass of milk from the kitchen. He'd nearly scared both of them into weeing themselves when he'd caught her having a good stretch-and-roll in front of the fire.

"You mustn't tell anyone, Neville," Narcissa warned him firmly as she'd settled him with a mug of cocoa. "Ever. I'm completely illegal because I'm not registered, and it's a secret besides."

"But _why_?" Neville said plaintively. He didn't really care about the illegal part; that was just stupid, he thought -  nobody had _any_ right to tell you that you had to tell them what you got up to in private as long as you weren't hurting anybody with it -  but... " _Why_ is it a secret? It's brilliant! I never even knew you wanted to be an Animagus! How old were you when you learned?'

"No one knew. Knows. And I was eighteen when I managed it. I started working at it when I was fifteen, privately - _very_ privately, as in completely-on-my-own-and-without-supervision privately - so that I might be of help during the war. I did succeed, as you saw, only... Well. I wasn't exactly what I was expecting in the end. And it's not like it's a very _useful_ form, is it?"

"I dunno about _that,"_ Neville said judiciously. "I could think of a few things I could use it for. Wait, _no_ one knows? Not even Uncle Luke?"

The pained, rather embarrassed look on Narcissa's face at that actually made him laugh.

"I'll tell him one day," she said. "I'm sure. I just need to work my way up to it."

"It's been seventeen years since you were eighteen," eight-year-old Neville pointed out. "What are you waiting for, your twentieth wedding anniversary? Your twenty fifth, maybe? Or your fiftieth, even?"

His unofficial godmother hadn't said anything more, only offered him The Look. Neville smirked at her behind his cocoa.

"I won't tell," he promised. "But I still think it's brilliant. And alright, maybe it's not useful, but it does really suit you."

"You hush," she ordered him. "It does not."

He smirked again. She swatted his blond head lightly.

"Mind your promise," she ordered. "Or I'll tell your Gran you broke your word to me, and then you'll be in for it."

"I might be," Neville agreed. "After she finishes laughing anyway, and that'd give me time to run for it."

"I'd catch you and bring you back to her." She blurred again. Neville put his cocoa down as she nuzzled at him, then put his little arms around her neck and hugged her hard. She nuzzled back and blurred again, the magnificent pale gold lioness with eyes of sea-green before him reshaping to the base form of the equally magnificent woman with pale gold hair and the same eyes.

"Is Uncle Luke an Animagus too?" Neville inquired, interested, as she re-seated herself.

"I have no idea. If he is, he hasn't told me about it."

"Maybe he's embarrassed too? What do you think I'd be if I were an Animagus, Auntie Niss?"

"I have no idea," she said again. "And you'd have to tell me a bit more about yourself, wouldn't you, before I could make an educated guess?"

"You know everything there is to know about me!" Neville protested. "I'm only eight; it's not like there's that much to be going on with!"

"Mm. Well, whatever it is, I can tell you this much. It won't stutter, will it?"

"Wh-what?"

"I won't tell on you if you don't tell on me." Narcissa Black Malfoy smiled at him. Neville flushed red, but nodded quickly. She leaned over and kissed his cheek gently.

"Back to bed with you," she ordered, and conjured a ball of blue fire and a glass jar, dropping the fire in neatly. "Here you are. Put it by your bed, and it will last till morning."

He'd taken the jar and padded off, glancing over his shoulder. She just winked at him and flicked her fingers. Tiny lightning bolts promptly nipped at his heels. He took the hint and bolted himself, as rapidly as he could without spilling the jar.

* * *

 

He couldn't bring anything else besides the clothes, Neville reminded himself firmly as he sat on his bathtub and went over his notes in his head as he waited. There were a few things he would have _liked_ to bring - one or two of his favourite books from Dad's collection, perhaps, with one or two of Mum's candy wrappers for markers - but Big Nev had told him that it just wasn't possible. The Project Managers weren't even sure his clothes would come through in the end. That was why the swap was happening (from Neville's side, at least) in his private loo. If all went well, he'd land smack in Big Nev's childhood equivalent, and if he came in starkers after all, they'd have something right there waiting.

Neville turned the framed portrait he held his hands over, examining it. Big Nev had told him that it would flash and warm to burning at some point during the night of the Spring Solstice, signifying the beginning of the magical rituals that the Project Managers had started on his end.  At some point within the hour following, it would flash again. At _that_ point, Neville would have exactly three minutes to get to his loo and place the portrait faces-side-up on the floor before the canvas would fade out and the frame/cross-dimensional portal would enlarge to an appropriate size for a very small boy about to take a very, _very_ large leap of faith.

After that...

Neville had no idea what would happen after that. Nobody was quite sure what would happen after that, not even the Project Managers. The theory was all sound, Big Nev had reassured him. They'd accounted for every single detail they could imagine too, and there were some _very_ creative people involved there. Still. No one had ever done up anything like the Project before, so even though they knew where they'd all start and where they'd all end up, the details of the in-between part: the _Crossing-Over_ part (and that was the part, when it came right down to it, that worried Neville the most: 'There and Back Again' was all very well, but, Smaug notwithstanding, it was the Journey Between that had given poor Bilbo the most headaches), were rather up for speculative grabs.

"We're the wizards here, though," Big Nev had reassured him. "Witches too, and we've not only got Gandalf on our side, we've got all of his acquaintances-friends-and-relations too. And he's got a bloody buggering lot of those to be going on with, even if they were never mentioned in the book."

"Gandalf exists in your world?" Neville brightened. "Really?"

"In a portrait, yeah. Portraits don't provide much in the way of original ideas, but he's good for inciting positive public morale, anyway."

"Oh well. _Morale_ ," Neville said, rather scornfully. "They talk about morale at the Ministry of Magic here. A lot. Gran says it's their favourite word, which just goes to show that no one in charge was ever a proper Longbottom. Longbottoms don't do morale. We Get The Thing Done. It's our _motto_."

"Mm," Big Nev agreed. "So let's just go with that on our end, and leave the rest to God."

"Did your portrait of Gandalf say that too?" Neville asked skeptically. Big Nev snorted. There was more than a bit of a sour note there.

"No," he said. "He was always all over the 'leave it to me.' Except when he was all over the 'it's all down to you.'"

"So you knew him?" Neville probed. "When he was alive?"

"Yeah. He wasn't a bad sort," Big Nev said. "He just wasn't God. And he thought he was, or more God than anyone else available anyway, and  that's why we're here talking now, when it comes right down to it."

"Isn't that because of You Know Who?"

"No. Riddle" - Big Nev always used You Know Who's proper name - "Just... Was. People like him always are. Bit predictable with it, really, and if you're aware, you can spot them and work to accommodate before they establish themselves as such. The problem starts when they _have_ established themselves, and no one standing against them can agree on how best to deal with them. Or who should be dealing with them. Or who has the right to tell the people that they designate as the dealers on how they should properly do their job, or even more importantly, advise them on actions - or options, even - that might actually help them along there so there's the least amount of damage done all around."

Neville, of course, couldn't, and didn't, have the context to process the subtext and finer implications there, but he got the gist anyway.

"Warding," he said. Big Nev blinked at him, startled.

"Uh?"

"You're talking about Warding. Warders are better than Aurors. Warders prevent messes. Aurors solve the messes. Or they try, anyway. Sometimes the Aurors end up _as_ the messes."

"Do you know any Warders?" Big Nev asked curiously.

"Yeah," Neville said, a bit dourly. "Us. That's what we're doing, right? Preventing problems? Gran wants me to be an Auror like Dad and Mum, but I don't reckon she quite gets that it's not what I've got from all of this."

"No," Big Nev said after a moment. "She probably doesn't. But then, we never told her, did we?"

"If we did," his younger counterpart said darkly, "We'd have to tell her The Rest. And that... That's _private_."

"Yeah," Big Nev said after another moment. "It is. Only... Can I say something here, Neville?"

"Sure."

"It's all been private for me," Big Nev said carefully. "My whole life. It's been a good life, in many ways... But sometimes I wonder if I'd do the same things I did, if I were to go back and be nine again. Keep it private, that is. Knowing how it would end up for me. And what differences it might have made, not just for me, but for everybody. Little things, they make all the difference, you know? And sometimes it's easier to watch out for the crucial points in time where they occur and prevent the differences than it is to change the results afterwards again. Normally, that's really, really hard; not many people have the ability or instincts to detect those points in time before they happen... But you do, don't you? You do, because I'm you, only older, and I can tell you."

"And I'm at one of those points now?" Neville asked him. "I mean... Do I have to decide now? Whether I keep it all private?"

"Not necessarily. You could decide that any point in your life. I think though," Big Nev said carefully again. "That you're at a point where it could make the most difference. I don't know whether it would make a good difference or a bad one, or what would happen after... I can't tell you that because I never made that decision myself - but I am saying that I'm sure, _absolutely_ sure, that it would make _a_ difference. Maybe... And it's instinct again, not foreknowledge... _The_ difference."

"But don't I have to be the same as you? And do the same as you? If we're going to be the same to come back?"

"No," Big Nev said. "You don't. 'Same' doesn't quite mean what you think it does, Neville. It doesn't mean we do the exact same things all the time. What it means is that if you were raised as I had been, with the same things happening to you, that you would make the same decisions I would have, based on our identical ways of thinking and processing different situations. And if I'd been raised as you've been, I would have made the same decisions _you've_ made, based on the same things. We're the same; we're matched... Our souls match... But not because our lives have been exactly the same, but because we're, absolutely again, inclined to react instinctively to any given situation in the same way. To think certain ways. To consider the same kind of things, no matter our differing situations, when we take the details into account."

Neville thought on that. Hard.

"Up to this point," Big Nev explained. "We've matched. If I had never talked to you in the portrait, we would continue to match. _That's_ how the magics define us as identical souls. And we needed to be identical souls, to create the gate, right? To open it. And we have created the gate, and it's all set to be opened... That's done. The requirements are fulfilled. Now all that's left is to unlock it and go through, and once we have, if you want to, you can decide to do things differently. To try something new, something that I didn't do, or wouldn't have done. That _you_ wouldn't normally do, or wouldn't do. If you _do_ make different decisions while you're away... It won't affect your ability to come back home. Because the door won't close, it'll be jammed open a bit from this first time around, so we won't have to do all the really hard magics twice."

"Would I still fit though? After?" Neville said dubiously. "I mean, the door makes its shape from our magical cores, you told me. It'll stay that shape even if it's jammed, yeah? And I'm that one shape now, but if I make different choices than I normally would, big choices... Won't my core change shape too?"

"Yes, but you'll fit," Big Nev reassured him. "It's one of the reasons we picked us at this age. When you were nine. Your magical core's still really squishy and movable, see? Developing. You can change a bit, and still squeeze back, and will continue to be able to do so till you're about fourteen. After that, things starts firming up a bit more."

Enlightenment dawned. "So _that's_ why the five year limit!"

"Exactly. So that's you. You don't have to worry there. With me, though, it's a bit different. If I change too much while I'm away, it _would_ be a lot harder to come back. My core's solidly established now that I'm old. If I do something that will make it reshape itself,  the implications would be a lot more drastic."

"You couldn't go back," Neville surmised.

"No. I couldn't. But then... I'm not meant to go back, am I? Not to live again, anyway. I'm meant to go On. At the end of the five years, the body the magics create for me will dissolve, and my soul will go On from the point souls usually do when bodies die. If I go through the gate, my soul will go through from _my_ side. If I don't, I'll still go On, just  from _your_ side."

"Do you think you'd go to the same place?" Neville asked as he pondered that. "Do you think After's the same, no matter what side you go from?"

"Some people don't," Big Nev said. "Most of them. It's logic, right? Different universe, different versions of ourselves, different, if matched, souls, so logically again, there'd be a different After. That's why the Project Managers built in the possibility of the return trip for all of the souls involved, not just for the souls crossing over with their original bodies. So that we who Crossed as souls without bodies can go to the After that we were born to go to when it's all over. But I don't think it works that way. I think it's all the same. Well," he corrected himself. "Not the same. That's not the right word. I think, when it comes down to it, that it's all One."

"So it doesn't really matter if either of us change after we get where we're going."

Big Nev had offered him his crooked little grin at that. "No," he said. "I don't suppose it does."

"I'll think about it," Neville said, reserved. "But only if you promise to think about it too."

Big Nev laughed. It sounded rather like a bear's roar. "How did I know you were going to say that," he teased.

"Maybe Gandalf told you?" Neville suggested. Big Nev didn't bother with the laugh at that one, he just threw back his head and roared directly.


	2. Of Portraits, Portals and Pocket Handkerchiefs

Neville Frank Longbottom was actually quite well acquainted with God. They'd never really talked much at all, but they most definitely, _definitely,_ had regular Words. Said Words were traditionally exchanged at Neville and Gran’s twice-monthly Sunday visits to St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and then again immediately following their established appointment at St. Mungo's Hospital of Magical Maladies and Injuries. The exchanges at the Cathedral were largely variations on _please god let them get/be better/dead,_ and _please god get me through this,_ but as for the words after...

The words after never changed.

 _You’re bollocks,_ Neville Longbottom would inform God, after he and Gran had returned home after one of their twice-monthly Sunday visits with his soft and vacant-eyed, gently vague and completely insane parents _. You’re bollocks, and I hate you._

Neville hadn't really known what bollocks were till he was six, only that Uncle Algie swore by them a great deal, and that Gran's lip would lift slightly when he mentioned them at the dinner table. Even before he’d identified them for what they actually were, though, he'd had had no doubt whatsoever that the word would offend God if directed at Him. And as he wished to make it clear- _crystal_ clear - to Whomever It Obviously Didn’t Concern that he, Neville Frank Longbottom, was offended by the way He was (or rather, wasn't) managing things, he felt absolutely no qualms about directing it. And if God wasn’t Man enough to manage His hurt feelings...

Well. Nine-year-old Neville had a few choice Words he could have offered up _there_ too. He'd been contemplating his options, in fact, exactly six weeks back from the night of the Spring Solstice as he sat on his bed in his room and traced the faces of the three individuals in the framed photo he held in his hand, over and over and over. It was a bit of a compulsive ritual of his: his way of re-grounding himself after each visit... He would gaze at the portrait for awhile, watching the image of his mother laugh and cry as she cradled his just-born self in her arms, and the image of his father putting his own arm around her, over and over and over as he laughed and cried along with her.  

No Words were ever actually exchanged during the ritual itself.  Other words were, or were rather remembered, and that was part of the ritual too… Not just words, either, those would have been quite enough for anyone to be going on with. There was The Rest of it too. And every twice-monthly Sunday evening, Neville would sit on his bed, portrait in hand, and relive the remembered words, and The Rest, and  when he'd done, again, from beginning to end (though truth be told the memory was more or less on perpetual loop; he'd just learned to live around it the rest of the time) he’d trace the three faces in the portrait one last time as he revisited his own clearest and fondest memory of his mother and father - that is, the moment That Night when they’d finally stopped screaming.

 _You're bollocks,_ he would say silently to God, when the ritual was done and he'd tucked the portrait back in the drawer. _You're bollocks, and I hate you._

He never expected God to respond. God didn't, in his experience. Exactly six weeks ago, though, as Neville Longbottom swung his legs off the bed, portrait in hand, and leaned over to open the drawer, and said the words... _You're bollocks, and I hate you_...

God had finally answered him.

"He's very sorry to hear that," a deep voice had said from the portrait in his hand. "And has authorized me to step in for Him just this once as I deliver this message in return."

The voice paused and waited politely as Neville shrieked and threw the portrait across the room, or rather started to throw it and fumbled madly to catch it, even as it left his hand. Somehow, through some miracle, he managed it.

"Nice _one_!" the voice said approvingly. Somehow again, through another miracle, Neville dredged up a bare ounce of courage.

"Dad?" he said faintly as he brought the portrait to his eyes. "Is that you?"

"Not quite," the voice said. Neville squeaked in protest as the images of his parents began to fade out. "Don't worry. They'll be back. After we talk."

"Wh-wh-wh..."

"Name's Neville," the old man before him now said cheerfully. "Neville Frank Longbottom. I'm here to tell you that not all those who wander are lost, and that you won't be either, should you choose to accept your mission."

"My... _What_?"

"Mission," the image of the old man said. "From God again. By proxy, anyway, and since He hasn't shut us down, we're pretty sure He approves. Fairly certain we couldn't manage it if He didn't; it's just that kind of Project."

There was a deep silence.

"What are you going on about?" Neville said suspiciously. "And how did you get in my portrait?"

"Magic."

"Uh huh. Are you an angel?"

"No more than you are." The chuckle was warm and deep. "But I _am_ here to help you."

"To help me... With what?"

"With saving your world," the man in his portrait said. "And with  bringing your parents back."

"Back?" Neville repeated, thoroughly confused now. "Back from... Where? St. Mungo's? Only they're safe there, they're taken care of, and Gran's getting on now, so..."

"No, not back from St. Mungo's.  Not back _from_ anywhere," the old man corrected. "Back _to._ Back to _you_."

"What," nine-year-old Neville Longbottom said, and not a little angry suddenly... " _What_ ? What are you going _on_ about? You think that's funny, do you? To make _jokes_ like that? It's not! It's not funny at _all_! Now go away! I want my parents back!"

"I know you do," the old man said into the silence, as Neville breathed heavily and angrily. "I know you do. And if you trust me, Neville... Just a little bit, long enough to listen to what I'm going to tell you next... You won't just get their photo back. You'll get the real thing."

"It's not _possible_ ! It's not, it _isn't_!"

"It is," the old man said. "But if you don't listen to me, Neville... It won't be. It won't ever be. And for the rest of your life, and I _know_ , because I've _lived_ it... You'll always wonder if listening to me would have made a difference."

The heavy angry breathing hitched abruptly to a halt. Neville stared at the portrait with wide, wet and bewildered eyes.

"Pull up a pillow," the old man invited him. "And make yourself comfy. This is going to take a bit of explaining. Or... Would you prefer to give it a go yourself first? A go based on the presumption that I am, in fact, telling you the truth? First hint again in case you missed it: we've got the same name."

And with that, the anger faded as quickly as it came. Neville  (like a certain Mr. Baggins of his fond literary acquaintance, and not unlike his own mother before him either, though he didn't know it) was constitutionally incapable of resisting a good riddle. His round little face scrunched in thought; his brow furrowed....

"You're my alien clone from another universe that runs a hundred years in the future," he said decisively. "Time-turners are too dangerous, and not that accurate anyway. Also, there's that life sentence in Azkaban just for theft-of, never mind _use_ -of, and the current inhabitants, Gran says, are not suitable company for one of my age, raising, and/or breeding. Also, she says that Dad and Mum would be terribly disappointed in me for breaking the law. I told her I thought they'd probably get over it if I managed to prevent their Chronic Situation from happening in the first place, but she still wouldn't go for it."

"And bang goes you. Finally found Dad's stash of sci-fi and fantasy novels in the attic, eh?"

"Only it wasn't exactly _hard_ , was it?" Neville said defensively. "They weren't _hidden_ or anything. There were, like, ten trunks of them right next to the Christmas tree lights. If Gran hadn't wanted me to see them, she should have sent one of the house-elves to get the box instead of me."

"That's our excuse-slash-explanation and we're sticking to it," his Alleged Elder Alien Clone agreed. "Anyway. Yes. As I said; bang goes you, _and_ well done. An excellent summary of the essentials, though we actually run a hundred twenty-seven years ahead of you here, not a hundred. "

"Ah." The boy settled cross-legged. "So. What am I saving the world from again, exactly?"

"Voldemort," the man in the portrait said succinctly. Neville drew back, blinked at him, alarmed as he glanced wildly around his bedroom. "No, no. He's not back yet; but he's scheduled to be soon enough, the great blithering pillock, and he'll make one hell of a mess before he's disposed of permanently. And we've already managed it here, so we reckoned we'd pass on the benefits of our experience so that your world doesn't have to go through it."

"Oh." Neville relaxed a little. "That's very thoughtful of you. Wait, hold up." He leaned over and fished under his bed, pulling out a shoebox full of chocolate frogs, unwrapping one, and examining the card.

"Dumbledore?"

" _That_ wasn't magic," Neville said around a fortifying mouthful. "It's always Dumbledore. He really gets around, that bloke, in person _and_ in chocolate. Alright then. Begin at the beginning, why don't you, and go till you reach the end; then stop."

"'Alice in Wonderland'. _That_ one was Mum's," the old man said. "She specially liked it, Gran says, because she and Dad had their first post-Hogwarts date at a pub called The Cheshire Cat, down the rabbit hole and through to London Muggleside."

"Steak and kidney for him, garden shepherd's pie for her, and they shared a sticky toffee pud," Neville agreed. "And then he tried to teach her to play  pool, and caught her in the mouth with his cue when he was just about to sink the eight ball. He fixed her up right away and said that he'd give her a re-match on bloody principle, and she told him she'd take him up on that but only on their wedding night."

The old man laughed. "Uncle Algie told us _that_ part. Gran banished him from family dinner for three months for it."

"Yeah." Neville's little brow wrinkled. "I don't reckon you ever figured out why? I've never quite got why she was so upset with him there."

"You will when you get to Hogwarts and tell the story to your mates in your third Charms class and Seamus Finnegan wees himself in front of everyone, he laughs that hard."

"Alright. So... You Know Who really _is_ coming back?" his younger counterpart asked. "And if  I accept this mission... He won't?"

"The odds are against it, yeah."

"Numbers," he ordered.

"If we pull off the transfer... Over ninety eight percent against."

"And the odds on Mum and Dad?"

"If all goes the way we're planning it again... Eighty five percent for."

There was a pause. Nine-year-old Neville's eyes narrowed in his round little face. He stared hard at the portrait. The old man waited.

"What about the other part," the boy asked, or rather demanded.

"And which other part would that be again?"

"If you really are me, you don't need to ask. Bringing back Mum and Dad is first on the list, but saving the world would really come third when it comes right down to it, wouldn't it? On our _private_ list, anyway."

His Alien Clone said nothing, just offered him a crooked little grin. In that moment, that one moment... Neville Frank Longbottom's heart pumped its fist and cheered in recognition and vicious joy.

"She's still there, then?" his older self asked. "In your world?"

"Oh yeah."

"Brilliant. D'you mind if I do the honours? Only, you know. Age. Experience. I've _learned_ a few things since I was nine, you see? Also," Big Neville added. Neville couldn't actually tell how big he was from the portrait, but he was older, and Old Neville was just disrespectful. "Someone else beat me to her, here. Hundred thirty-seven years old now and we of _all_ people know that life isn't fair, but still. I've never got over it."

"No," Neville agreed. "I don't suppose you would have. _I_ wouldn't have. Alright. Normally I'd say no, but if you're really me when it comes right down to it... Consider her a gift, as long as you tell me all about it. And show me, too. I want," he said with deliberate precision. "The _memory_."

"Done," Big Nev - he was definitely a Nev, Neville decided, not a Neville - said instantly. "Once you’ve come of age, anyway. Don’t worry about it,” he added as Neville protested. “I’ll make sure it’s worth the wait. And the others?"

"You can hand them off to anybody you want as long as they get done, but not her. She's _ours_."  

"Any messages?"

"Yeah. Tell her she should be proud. Tell her little Nevvy learned his lessons well. After that... I don't care how you do it as long as it hurts. _A lot_. And when you're almost done, not all done, but almost done- you can tell that her I - we - _meant_ it. Also," he added fiercely. "Laugh. Because I would if it were me."

"It will be..." The crooked little grin was back. There was a decidedly nasty little undertone there now… Nine-year-old Neville actually shivered in  anticipation of the two words that he somehow _knew_ were coming next. "Our _pleasure_."

"Brilliant. So how will it all work? And why aren't you asking me why I'm not stuttering?" Neville asked as recovered from the shiver and fished for another frog. The second question was, of course, a test.

"Why would I? We never stuttered when we were alone. Only when adults were around. We reckoned it made us look vulnerable and prevented them from asking too many questions about what we were thinking about, because if you stutter they just assume that you're stupid and _can't_ think, and we reckoned that they wouldn't really want to know anyway."

"Bang goes you," Neville agreed. "Did you make your magic wait too?"

"Yeah. I was always worried on what kind of outbursts could really be defined as accidental there. You might not want to do that anymore. I did, and it got a bit..." Big Nev gestured. "Stuck. Wasn't helped by the fact that Gran made me use Dad's wand for five years till I accidentally broke it, and I did manage to get around the limits there eventually, but it always took a lot more effort than it should have, till I got my own anyway."

" _You broke Dad's wand_?" His expression was patently horrified.

"It went out with a bang," Big Nev reassured him. "And for an excellent cause. Gran wasn't even really mad about it. Bit of a hint for you, she actually kind of enjoys it when we break the rules. Not in any way that's. You know..."

"Ungentlemanly?"

"Mm. But if you can manage it with style and the classically unperturbed demeanor, she'll just twist your ear a bit on principle and offer you second helpings of dessert at dinner."

"She does that with me when I show what she calls cognitive initiative. Dunno what that means; is it the same thing?"

"Not quite. It means that she likes it when you think for yourself."

"Oh. Well, how was I supposed to know _that_? I would have looked it up, only dictionaries aren't any good if you can't spell what you're looking for, are they?"

"No," Big Nev agreed. "Not much help at all."

"Well, then." Neville bit the head off the frog. "Go on. I'm listening. What do I have to do?"

And Big Nev told him. It took, as he said, quite some time... By the time he wound up, Neville had gone through his entire stash of chocolate frogs  - enough of them to feel a bit sick with it - and was staring, dumbfounded, at the old man in the portrait.

"Blimey," he said finally. "You're serious? I mean... You're not just having me on?"

"Nope," Big Nev said. "I know it's a lot to take in, but think about it, alright? If it helps, you won't be alone. There'll be someone else your age coming along for the ride too."

"Yeah?" Neville sat up fully. "Who? Do I know them?"

"I reckon you've heard of him, anyway," Big Nev said. "Though I'm warning you now, he won't be quite what you expect. And he'll be really put off if you tell him that, so... Don't."

"Has he already agreed to do it?"

"Yes," Big Nev said. "He has. He'll come through when his counterpart dies here, swapping out just like we will. Would," he corrected himself. "Six weeks isn't much notice, I know, but that's just the way the necessary schedule of events has fallen out. I wish I could give you more time to decide, but..."

"Decide what?"

"Whether you want to go? This isn't an overnight trip, Neville. This is two to five years of your _life,_ away from Gran and your parents and everything you know, and there's only one return train at the end of it all. _Two to five years,_ in a new world a universe away, with no one you know... There'll be people here who'll love you and take care of you, but nothing, _nothing_ will be familiar. You won't even be in the same time period because we do run a hundred twenty-seven years ahead of you here. And however small a chance there is... Things _could_ go wrong."

"I get all that," Neville said impatiently. "I'm not stupid.  If you're really me, you know exactly what I'm thinking at you right now."

"Yes," Big Nev agreed. "I reckon I do. Excellent vocabulary there. Very pithy _."_

Neville sniggered.

"Do you remember enough to manage here?" he asked belatedly. It was a ridiculous question, he knew, all things considered, but then again…  "I mean, I can leave lists and all, but..."

"Sundays," Big Nev said.  "First and third of every month. We sit in the pew at St. Paul’s  from ten to eleven thirty and tell God to shit or get off the pot. Twelve to one thirty: lunch at who-the-hell-remembers-because-the-food's-best-forgotten-and-we're-never hungry-anyway, and then we go see them, from two to four. We sit on Dad's bed and he holds our hand, and it's soft, and shaped like ours but bigger, and Mum sits and pets our knee and our hair, and there's nothing but the dark space between the stars in her eyes because the stars have all been burnt out, wherever she is. We have a cup of tea, and it tastes like the ward smells: like wee and pine needles, and Gran talks about..."

Big Nev paused. Neville waited.

"I don't remember what she talked about," Big Nev confessed. "I don't know about you, but I couldn't stand to listen. I just wanted to go home. And  Mum would give us our candy wrapper, and we'd take it home to put in the box under our bed while Gran went for a lie-down before dinner. While she did that, I would take the portrait from my second drawer and sit on my bed again and run my finger over their faces, and mine, and think about that night, or rather remember it, and then I'd tell God I hated Him, and that He was bollocks."

Neville shifted a bit.

"I'm going to do it," he said. "Of course I'm going to do it. I'm just…” His round little shoulders hunched. “I’m really scared."

"Me too," Big Nev said, with absolute and utter sincerity _. "_ Oh, me too. I've never been so bloody scared of anything in my whole _life_."

"Not even of You Know Who?"

"Pfft. No. We grew up with _Gran_. He might have been - be? - Dark, but he had nothing on Gran's kind of scary."

"Gran is scarier than You Know Who?"

"Neville," Big Nev said then. "Have you ever thought about Gran's hat? I mean... _Really_ thought about it?"

"What, the vulture one?"

"Yeah. Only you know that vultures eat carrion, right? Dead things?"

Neville's nose wrinkled. "Yeah?"

"They eat _death_. They're _Death Eaters_. Gran walks around every day with a bloody dead and stuffed Death Eater mounted like a bloody trophy on her head. As a _fashion statement_."

Neville's jaw dropped as that processed.

"Er," he said. "Wow. That's..."

"Scary?" Big Nev suggested.

 _"Brilliant,"_ Neville said fervently, and laughed so hard he nearly fell off his bed. "Bloody hell," he gasped finally. "D'you reckon she's named it Bellatrix?"

"Well, it is a female," Big Nev said. "I asked her whether it was when I finally figured out the symbolism there." He grinned. "You should ask her now. Before you come here. Just let her in on that you know what she's saying with it. She'd appreciate your - our? - precocious grasp of the metaphor, never mind your cognitive _initiative_."

"I will," Neville promised, and he had... The next time they'd gone out to see Mum and Dad, he'd eyed the vulture rather obviously as she took it off at lunch and set it on the chair beside her.

"Yes?" she inquired politely as he retrieved the menu.

"Nothing," he said. He let his lips tilt at her a bit, doing his best to imitate his memory of Big Nev's crooked little grin. "Only I was thinking... I bet Mum and Dad would really like your hat."

Gran's hand stilled a moment, and she sat back and looked him over in a way she never had before. Neville actually thought he could detect a spark of sharp, surprised appreciation in her eyes... She said nothing, but after a moment, picked up the menu again and and perused it. After she ordered for them, the waitress turned, and she held up her hand. The waitress turned back inquiringly.

"It was a rather long sermon," Augusta Domitia Claudia, Dame Lady Longbottom informed her. "It always is, when the Archbishop takes the pulpit himself. I believe that I shall have a slice of your lovely and fortifying apple pie with my after-luncheon tea. Warmed, with a scoop of vanilla ice, please."

"Yes, ma'am," the waitress said, and after they'd both finished their lamb and peas and she'd brought the tea and desserts, Augusta Longbottom sat, fingers curled around her tea cup and pie untouched as she watched her small grandson scrape his plate industriously, down to the last drip of sticky toffee pud. When he was finished, she pushed her own plate over gently. He looked up at her, surprised. Her eyes were soft, and surprisingly focused in a way that they didn't tend to be on the first and third Sundays of the month.

"Go on," she said, and as he dove in, sipped her tea again, watching him. Neither of them said anything more, but when they'd approached the lifts to the Janus Thickey ward, he felt her fingers squeeze his shoulder lightly. Very, very daringly (Gran didn't approve of overt displays of affection), Neville slipped his small hand in hers and  squeezed back. It only lasted a moment, but her fingers tightened a little, he thought, before she freed herself gently and pressed the upwards button... Neville hadn't tried to take it again, just stuffed both hands in his robe pockets and smiled to himself down at his feet. He hadn't been able to see his own face, but if he had, just for that moment, he would have seen Big Nev's crooked little grin there, displayed in all its full glory.

The lift chimed sweetly. The doors slid open. Neville squinted and blinked as the small chamber he stood in was suddenly filled with light. The hospital wards must be on the blink themselves, he thought, if the fanned _lumos_ charms that kept the entire floor constantly and softly and soothingly aglow were…

“ _Bugger!_ ” he said in horror, jerking himself from his memories and leaping to his feet from the edge of the bathtub in a panic. The portrait glowed brilliantly in his hand. “Bugger, bugger, _plonker_ , I am _such_ a plonker, three minutes, three minutes, bugger, bugger, _bollocks_!” He placed the portrait on the floor of the loo, face down, and slapped himself. “Faces up, faces up, faces…” He flipped it over. “Three _minutes,_ he told you, of all the times to space out, I am _such_ a _plonker_!”

The portrait faded out. The frame began to widen. Neville bounced frantically from foot to foot as it grew.

_please god please god please god let there be enough time left please please ple…_

The frame stopped growing. Neville suddenly had to wee more than he’d ever had to wee in his life. He hesitated, looking from the portal to the toilet.

“Bloody buggering _bollocks_ ,” he said aloud and desperately, and then, making his decision, firmed his lips and set his little round jaw.

“This just better _work_ ,” he said aloud to God again. “Only _You’ll_ be the one explaining everything to Gran if it doesn’t, won’t You? And Auntie Niss, and good luck with that, is all there is to say about _that_.  Alright. Alright. Alright. I can do this. I can. I _can._ I am Longbottom of Longbottom, and We Get the Thing Done. _Bollocks_. On three. Only I really, _really_ have to wee. _Bugger!_ Alright.  Portrait, portal, pocket handkerchief… I can do this. I _can_. Only don't let me die with it, alright? One-two-three-bang-goes- _me_! ”

And nine-year-old Neville Frank Longbottom leaped, his last words swallowed by the vast sphere of burning blue fire that rose up, engulfed him, and became him.


	3. Potter

Neville Longbottom woke slowly from a dream of fire: of burning and dying and rising again, and over and under all of it, the lingering echo of music in a low, minor key.

It had not been as unpleasant as he'd anticipated, he thought as he lay face down on the floor, his arms and legs limp and heavy and weighted as lead. He wasn't entirely sure _what_ it had been. 'Really bloody weird' was a good place to start, he thought, and tried to lift an arm. He failed spectacularly, and settled for a finger.

That worked well enough. After a pause to recover from the breathtaking nausea induced by the effort, he attempted a second. It was a bit more difficult, but things eased up a bit by the fourth, and by the time he reached his thumb, the rest of his body had got the hint on what was coming. Grumbling, it braced itself, and with a giant, mighty effort, managed to heave itself up so that Neville was in a sitting position.

It was a mistake. Vomit sprayed everywhere. When Neville could manage it, he lay back down, on his side this time, and whimpered a bit. Surprisingly, it helped. Focusing on the sounds of his own distress, he breathed a bit easier... He felt a soft rush of magic as his surroundings (and clothing) cleaned themselves peacefully.

After another few minutes, he tried to sit again. It went a bit better this time, and after a few more rounds of self-reassuring breathing, he mustered up the strength (and courage) to check himself for missing bits. Oddly, the only things he couldn't seem to account for were his shoes. His pocket handkerchief, he was pleased to note, was still firmly tucked in his right trouser pocket... He picked himself up painfully - his head was now throbbing as if it had come over with its own frantic, overworked heart - and brushed off the seat of his trousers. His head spun, he grabbed onto the wall, dizzy and nauseated again. The rich, damp scent of freshly turned earth filled his nose, wafting through the open window. He breathed deeply again, and closed his eyes.

_In... Out... In... Out..._

Neville breathed, and breathed again, and closed and opened his eyes for the third time. He was in a loo alright, but it was not _his_ loo. Brighter, cleaner, and bigger too; it had all been done over with accessories and gadgets that he couldn't even begin to identify. The toilet, at least, was familiar… He made his way over, inching painfully so as not to jostle his head off his shoulders, and adjusted his trousers, weeing  for what seemed an age… When he was finished, he adjusted his clothes again, and made his way to the sink. The water rushed obligingly when he held his hands under the tap. Beside the soap and hand-towel was a small vial of pale yellow potion, with a smiley-faced label and the encouraging, neatly printed words ‘DRINK ME!’ Neville picked it up, examined it, shrugged, and uncorked it, swallowing it quickly. It tasted like Muggle gumdrops, and he nearly collapsed with relief as the near-blinding headache receded quite as quickly as Uncle Algie’s hairline.

Neville made his way carefully to the window again. It had been just past one in the morning when he'd stepped through the portal... Now, the sun was directly overhead, and the shadows skittering across the greening hill and edging out from the border of the sprawling, familiar forest behind Longbottom Manor indicated that it was high noon.

There was also a cricket pitch where his herb garden had been, and beyond that, a palomino hippogryph that had _definitely_ not been there when he'd last looked. Its accompanying saddle was slung over the enclosing fence, and it looked quite content with its current lot in life as it grazed on the hapless gophers that had plagued the particular field since the Manor had been built.

_It's true? It's really, really... True?_

"Neville Longbottom?" a young voice said.

"Yes?" Neville said automatically, turning, and as Gran had taught him, bowed a little through his nausea. "Urgh." He straightened hastily, still holding onto the wall. "At your service. Only it'll have to wait because I think I'm going to be..."

He bolted to the toilet and spewed violently again, over and over. He missed rather spectacularly, but as before, the loo just cleaned itself peacefully. When he was finally done, he straightened and wiped his mouth, spitting into the toilet again.

"Alright then?" the voice inquired from outside the door.

"I dunno. I think so? Did it work?"

"Yeah. I reckon it did. Is it safe?"

"Yeah." Neville sank onto the edge of the tub. "Urgh. That was _horrid_."

"Not as bad as apparating," a small boy said as he appeared in the doorway.  Neville blinked hard. His vision was still a bit swimmy from the force of the sicking up, but he got a definite impression of black hair and extremely skinny legs. "I got floo-runes on my feet first thing, to get around that. Big Harry invented them, and left the secret in the family vault so we Potters can use them as needed."

"Floo... Uh?"

"Runes. They're _bio_ -runes. I don't really understand them, but they said I probably will when I'm bigger, because Big Harry invented them. I don't see how that will necessarily follow, but whatever.  They’re interesting enough in their own right that I reckon I might have a look on my own time.  Can I come in, then?"

"Sure." Neville rested his elbows on his knees and held his head. The boy came further in and perched beside him. He was chewing on a breakfast banger and smelled strongly of garlic.

"They're all waiting downstairs," the boy informed him. "Only I told them I wanted to be the one to see you first. They were all waiting when I came through, and it was a lot to take in, and I sicked up all over Al besides. He said it was alright, he was used to it, but still. Bit embarrassing, yeah?

“Who's Al?" Neville asked, turning his head slightly to peer up sideways. The garlic wasn't so bad, really, but the shirt the boy was wearing was painfully - no _, offensively_ \- purple. There was the image of a Chinese Fireball on the front, smoking at him solicitously from its nostrils. He looked away quickly.

"Big Harry's son. Reckon you'll know him as soon as you see him; he looks just like me but old."

Neville took another deep breath at that, and sat up slowly. As his vision cleared again, he blinked. He himself was not tall for his age, but the scrap beside him was _tiny_ \- the size of a well-grown five, or smallish six-year-old, complete with  gold-tipped black hair, enormous almond-shaped green eyes and a small, lighting shaped scar over his right eye. Neville's mouth dropped open indelicately as _that_ one processed.

" _Blimey_! Are you... I mean, Big Nev said, but... Are you _really_?"

"Bang goes you." The Boy-Who-Lived popped in the last of his banger, chewing it rather revoltingly with his mouth open. "Potter in Person. No autographs please: we're here till Tuesday, try the veal."  

Neville just gawped. The boy hitched himself up. Not only was he tiny, but he was most peculiarly dressed. He was wearing slim-fitting orange shorts - they looked like they were more pockets than shorts -  that hung to his bone-thin calves, the purple t-shirt with the gold-etched roaring dragon on the front, and a green and blue braided plastic bracelet. His feet were clad in strange high shoes with blue soles, blue laces (neatly tied and triple knotted), tiny fluttering wings and blinking lights. Neville looked closer. There was an earring in the boy's left ear, shaped like a spider. It waved a tiny forelimb at him. Neville wiggled his fingers back automatically.

"I'm gonna warn you now," Harry Potter said to him. Neville jerked his attention away from the spider. "They're all a bit nutters here. Not The Family; they're alright, but lots of other people -everybody else, really -  only they think we're heroes, you see? Not just because of what our doubles did, but because we agreed to come here at all."

"Well, _that's_ stupid." Neville revived a bit. "Only what were we supposed to do exactly? Say no?"

"That's what I said," Potter agreed. "And we were coming up on Christmas when Al called me over besides. I wasn't sorry to get out before _that._ Getting shot of the Dursleys before the holidays was more than incentive enough, even without the Future Of The World at stake."

"Before Christmas? Wait, I thought we were supposed to come through on the same day we left!"

"We did. There was only one portal and it only opened once, they told me, but everybody was launched through and landed in our places at different points in  time. For you and me, those were the days our doubles died. The Project Managers knew when that would happen because they found a way to peek forward before they died and look, and they planned the rest around it."

"Oh." Neville digested that. "Big Nev didn't tell me any of that."

"He had other stuff to talk to you about," Potter said. _"Life_ stuff. I'm not so hard to replace as you are, so we didn't have to cover all that, and I could ask more on the technical details in the time there was for me to talk with Al. You're different, though, yeah?  People care enough about you to be able to tell the differences between you and Big Nev. Nobody cared about me, not in any way that they'd notice Big Harry making mistakes that I wouldn’t’ve, anyway."

Neville offered him a peculiar look at that, but said nothing as the boy continued to rattle on blithely.

"Anyway. I thought it was all a bit interesting, the magics and the times, but I was confused too, so I made them explain the whole Project to me when I got here. The technical details again.  And they said that the magics inside the gate erased the importance of the individual days that brought them - us - all together to open it the one not-moment. I don't know how that would work, exactly, or how they made it work, only that there was a magic time-turner involved, and two magic rooms, one at Hogwarts and one at the Ministry of Magic, and that it was all worked up around the four seasons again. The four Solstices."

 _That_ much, Neville understood.

"They're really powerful, those days," he offered.  "Everything re-balances then, magically speaking. All the leylines, everywhere, Gran says, across the world... They  renew themselves. I don't know how that works, but that's what she says."

"Recalibration," Potter said.

"What?"

"Not renewal.  Recalibration. ‘To calibrate’,” he recited. “‘To  check, adjust, or standardize a measuring instrument, usually by comparing it with an accepted model.’ Leylines channel raw magical flow like veins channel blood through the body, toward the end of balanced global distribution. If they didn't, the raw magic would chunk in different spots at random,  and would upset the balance around the planet, of... Everything. But the earth spins and cycles, and things on the earth move, like tectonic plates and avalanches and lightning strikes and forest fires and other natural and un-natural disasters, and sometimes asteroids hit too, and the leylines, or rather, the established  paths along which the leylines travel, the ley-paths, get damaged. It's got specially bad because of pollution, yeah, because it  changes water and soil, and the mineral compositions there, and the ley-paths  usually follow the established flow and distribution of sediment and minerals that have settled over the eons.”

“Oh,” Neville said blankly. “Alright, then.”

“S’really not that complicated,” Potter said, a bit patronizingly. “Mining is complete _rubbish_ for ley-paths, let me tell you, and don't even get me started on pesticides. Those not only upset the soil, they upset things like the bee population that helps distribute and fertilize the soils, everywhere, through cross-pollination. And the flow gets interrupted, and that's not good for anybody, because too much magic in one place, or not enough in another, causes even _more_ kinds of accidents. So the leylines have a built-in alarm system, based around the seasons,and the tides, and planets, and the sun and all - it's all got to do with our position in the solar system, and distances from the sun again and the other planets; that's why Magicals study Astronomy, really so they can help keep track of potential disturbances. And the alarm goes off four times a year, and those times are when the magic going through the leylines all focuses on the recalibration of the ley-paths themselves. Like a diagnostic _x_ -ray, and once the magics figure out where the problem sections are, they work to give them a tune-up. To repair the weak spots, and make everything flow nicely again, if not in the original patterns, because that can't always be done, but when that happens, they accommodate and reroute the ley-paths, all according to the last round of changes that have happened since the last Solstice, and so that the ley- paths end up the way they're supposed to be, all equidistant from the main continental magical nodes."

This was all said in one breath, rattled off with much hand gestures and foot-kicking, and with absolutely no hesitation and much and growing enthusiasm... Neville gazed at him, astonished.

"Wow," he said. "I didn't even get half those _words_ , never mind the explanations!"

"It's runes stuff," Potter said vaguely. "And Arithmancy stuff, and all the stuff, really; that's what the different schools of magic are all about, but it mostly comes back to runes again. Runes and wards. That's why wards are so important. They're what the leylines do on the four Solstices. They ward the ley-paths. And that's what Warders do. _They_ work to reduce the impacts of natural and unnatural accidents of things,  through runes and spell-cast shields, and prevent natural and unnatural accidents and incidents before they happen, so that on the four Solstices, the ley-paths won't be so damaged. Too much damage, and there's only so much even magic can do, right? Specially," he added. "When you'd think that the Nomaji were setting out with all the industrialization and rubbish like that  to make it _happen_."

"Maybe we can talk about it later?" Neville said faintly. "My head hurts again."

"Cross-dimensional traveling is rubbish," Potter agreed sympathetically. "Well, no it's not, not on the technical level, but on the personal level, it's a different story. You'll feel better soon though, I reckon. Once _you_ recalibrate."

"Alright," poor Neville said. "Christmas?"

"Oh. Right." Potter collected himself. "So. The first and second pairs of us went through on the Summer and Fall Solstices last year, and I came through three months ago, at the Winter Solstice. December 20th, 2116.  You and Big Nev were the last pair, so it's March now: March 20th, 2117. The Spring Solstice. They all knew when we'd  be coming, 'course, so for me, because it was Christmas, they did the holiday up specially _for_ me.  Bloody weird  because Big Harry's funeral was in there too, but nice, specially since I didn't have to cook a thing, _or_ wash up. All I had to do was eat and open presents, can you believe it? I reckon there were more presents there just for me than Dudders got in all the Christmases he's ever had put together." He held up a blinking foot and examined it. It whistled cheekily and fluttered its wings at him.  "Last Christmas I got an empty noodle box. I used it to make a house for my spiders though, so _that_ was alright."

"Your..." Barely was the word out of his mouth before he skidded to the toilet again. Potter winced in sympathy as he lowered his foot and watched.

"You should be alright by morning," he told him as Neville paused for breath. "I ended up sleeping in the bathtub my first night because I just had to lean over the edge when I needed to sick up. "

"Thanks." Neville spewed one last time, paused tentatively, then stood, spat and rinsed again. "Bleah. Alright. You're Harry Potter. We're on another world. We're here for two years, at least, and..." He sat down abruptly on the edge of the tub again. "This is _crazy._ This can't be _real_!"

"It is, and it is." Potter patted his back. "It's alright here, though. And you won't want to eat tonight  unless it's to have something to sick up, but I reckon they'll have all your favourites tomorrow again. They did mine. I've had roast beef and treacle tart every day so far 'cept Christmas, and _that_ was turkey and mince pie. Also, Scorpius' fruitcake. Aunt Petunia's fruitcake is rubbish compared to Scorp's. Well, compared to anybody's, really. I couldn't be even be buggered to sneak any, it was that bad. Frankie says I'm going to have to start eating veg sooner or later, but..."

"Frankie?" Neville Longbottom sat bolt upright. "Frankie... _What_?"

"Big Nev's son? They told you, remember, that he'd be taking care of us when we got here?"

"Wha... Oh. Yeah." He breathed again. "And his wife's Stella. Blimey, this is all so _weird_!"

"Looks like it'll be worth it, though," Harry Potter noted. "For both of us. You for your parents, and me because I won't ever have to go back to the Dursleys or kill any  Dark Wankers. Only that’d be a bit of rubbish job, wouldn’t it?  And I read the history books, and it didn't sound just like a bit of rubbish, it sounded like a _lot_ of rubbish." He nodded decisively. "War's for grown-ups, not for kids. I mean, of course we're _affected_ by it, but we shouldn't have to _fight_ it. That's just..." He paused, searching for an appropriate word.

"Rubbish?" Neville offered helpfully.

"Bollocks." Potter kicked his heels emphatically. The wings made rude raspberry sounds at him. He made one back, then stilled. "I'm really sorry about your mum and dad. I'm not a hero. I came so I wouldn't have to be one. Also, the Dursleys. But I reckon _you're_ one, a bit, anyway." He gave him a light punch on the shoulder. "Well done, you. I dunno whether my parents would be proud of me, I never knew them, but yours sure will be, when we go back. And just think, they'll be able to tell you themselves!"

Neville's stomach ached at that. Hard, at the memory of his mother's gentle aimless face and his father's square soft hands in his.

"It's not done yet," he said. He hunched his round little shoulders.

"It's only for a bit," Potter said, trying for bracing and comforting, and sounding only semi-hopeful. "And it's not one way, is it?"

"I'd've come one way, to help them," Neville said quietly. Potter said nothing, just examined his blinking, fluttering feet again.

"I hope Big Harry gets a few of his own in against Dudders before he goes to Hogwarts," he said into the silence. "Going back as a grown wizard, as brilliant as he is? Pig-in-a-wig won't see what's coming."

"He'll be awfully confused, though," Neville pointed out. "Big Harry, yeah? Only Big Nev said he won't remember any of the Project at all, not till they get You Know Who. And he might be a grown up inside, but he won't look like it. He'll still look like a kid. I don't know much about what _that'd_ be like, but I've got lots of experience with people being kids inside and looking like grown-ups. I don't reckon it's easy either way."

Potter lapsed into silence again at that.

"Yeah," he said. "I reckon they don't... They didn't get that.  When they were planning this. I mean, I didn't talk to Big Harry before coming here, just Al, but I don't he think ever told anybody what it was _really_ like. _I_ wouldn't have."

Neville looked at him sideways again, confused. The scrap caught his eye, then looked away again, uncomfortably.

"They would have put it in the history books if he had, is all," he said. "They put everything in the history books here. _Private_ stuff. And if he's really like me, he wouldn't have told them they could, which means that they all just went ahead and did it anyway.  Without _asking_.   _And_ it means he's got to do it _again_. For two _years_. I don't care how grown up he is; it' ll still be rubbish for him even if he can use his magic to get around most of it. And I might have got here five days before Christmas, but he got _there_ just in time for it all, didn't he?"

Neville didn't quite know what to say to that.

"They keep trying to get me to tell them what it was like there," the boy beside him told him. "But I know better. They just want to know so they can write more stupid history books. Even the Mind Healers do it. They say it's all _confidential_ , but in two-to-five I won't be here, will I? What's to stop them from telling everybody then? They'll prolly make a series out of it and announce it on the bloody news."

Neville couldn't even begin to fathom what Potter was talking about, and from the way he was talking, he was more than a bit afraid to ask, but...

"Who are the Dursleys?" he ventured. "Only... Big Nev didn't tell me much about you, really. Only that you'd be here too."

"Yeah. He would't've. _He_ was alright. The Dursleys are my Nomaj relatives. Aunt-and-Uncle  Petunia-and Vernon-Dursley, and my cousin Dudley. He's the pig-in-the-wig. Bloody Albus _Dumble_ dork took me to live with them right after my parents were killed. They're definitely rubbish." Potter kicked the floor once again in emphasis. "And it's not just me who thinks so. I mean, they said Dudders grew up a bit with it here..." It sounded decidedly skeptical - "And Al said that his cousins  - Dudders' kids - were alright, but that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia never got any better. That they were as dead awful all their lives here as they are now, on our world."

"You don't have to tell me any more," Neville said awkwardly. "I'm sorry. It's private."

"Not here, it's not. Everybody knows. Or they think they do, anyway.  And I'd rather tell you myself than you read about it."

"Now?"

"No. But I told them all that. The Family. You'll be here at Longbottom Manor for about a week while we catch you up, and I told them straight up that there are some things _I_ want to tell you, because it's not theirs to tell. It's _mine_." His thin little face was not just fierce, but hard. "That was _him_ here, and I'm _not him_. I'm _me_. I'm _not history_ , and nobody has _any_ right to say anything that they think is about me, because I'm not _theirs_.  Our history hasn't been written yet. Theirs doesn't apply to us just because we look the same, and they all might think they know us, but they _don't_."

Neville didn't dare interrupt.

"So I wanted to talk to you first," Harry Potter continued. "And tell you that. So you can start as you want them to go on, not them make _you_ into how _they_ want you to be. And you have to be firm about it, Longbottom. You have to make them understand, straight up, that you're _you_."

"How do I do that?" Neville said dubiously. "I don't even really know who me _is_. The only thing I know for sure is that I'm not like Dad. Gran tells me _that_ much like, twelve thousand times a day."

"It's not important who you are. You're a kid, you're not supposed to know yet. The _point_ is, is that you know who you're _not_. Big Nev. So if they start in on how you're just like him, tell 'em to shut it," Potter said decisively. "If they start going on about how your future turns out, you tell 'em that's not your future; it's his past. Just because you look the same, and had some of the same things happen to you, up to this point... Doesn't mean you are him. Or that you'll want to do the same things, or have the same interests or careers.”

"People tell you all that a lot?"

"They try, anyway.  Frankie told me to watch out for that when I first came, and I thought he was just taking the piss, but he was right.  Al too. I reckon _he_ knows what it's like, because he looks almost as much like Big Harry as I do. So he told me to tell all them to bugger off when they start in. Even if it's the Minister of Magic, or the Supreme Mug-wotsit, or the King. Because they're all really loud about it, yeah? They think they're being nice, but they're just being stupid gits. So you have to make the point straight up." He nodded decisively again.

"How?" Neville asked again. Potter considered that, and him.

"You look just like Big Nev's pictures when he was your age," he said. "We can fix that, before we go dow..."

"HARRY!" A voice bellowed. "EVERYTHING ALRIGHT UP THERE?"

"Oop. Hold up." Potter went to the door. "Everything's fine, Frankie," he called. "He's here alright, and he's fine; we're talking now, and it's private. We'll be down in a bit."

"Is that Big Nev's son?" Neville craned his neck.

"Yeah. He's great." Potter returned to the tub. "Bloody fantastic cook, and funny as shite." He caught Neville's scandalized look. "What?"

"You said..." He lowered his voice.

"Shite?" Potter finished helpfully.

He nodded. The scrap cocked his head again.

"You don't swear?" he asked. "At all?"

"No. Not out loud, anyway. Gran would kill me."

"Do you ever _want_ to swear?"

"Yeah," Neville admitted. "But I can't. It's not gentlemanly."

"Bugger that. Okay, Longbottom. First thing. Big Nev didn't swear either. Not when he was our age anyway. So you're going to."

"Er. What?"

"It makes the point. That you're not him. From now on... You, _Not_ -Big-Nev Longbottom, are going to say exactly, _exactly_ what you think about everything and everyone you see. Out loud."

"I can't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Because..." Neville floundered. "I just... _Can't_ ! It's not _polite_!"

"I know." Potter patted his shoulder. "I had a hard time for a bit with it too, at first. It's not really swearing though, Frankie says, not when it comes right down to it. It's expressing yourself. They actually like it when I do it, they say it's good therapy. To which I say whatever, but it's fun anyway. And we're only here for two-to-five years, so it's not like it'll have long term _implications_." Downstairs, Frankie's voice called out again. Potter grimaced, those green eyes flashing suddenly, not just with impatience, but real, hard, and decidedly _un_ -childish irritation... Neville shifted uneasily. Looks like that, he thought, at least from people his age, were not meant to be displayed outside of one's head. Never mind polite, it was just _dangerous_.

"We don't have much longer," Potter said. "They've got a healer downstairs to check you out and everything. So. Repeat after me. Bleeding hell."

"Erhm. Bleeding hell."

"Sod off and die."

"Potter..."

"Just try it. _Trust_ me!"

"I don't even _know_ you!'

"And everybody here thinks they do. Just like they'll think they know you. This... This is your holiday, Longbottom. Your _holiday_ ," Harry Potter said emphatically. "From your _life_."

Neville Longbottom sat on the edge of his new bathtub in the new world in the new universe and thought about that.

"Sod off and die," he said finally.

"Brilliant. How do we feel about rice pud?"

"It's complete bloody rubbish."

"Fantastic. You've got it already!"

"I do?"

"Yeah. They've got a whole basin downstairs, with raisins and cream just like..." He paused. "Wait, you actually _don't_ like rice pud?"

"Rice pud," Neville informed him. "Was invented by a Dark Wanker. It's the only explanation."

"More for me," Potter shrugged. "It's a good start on making them realize you’re you, anyway. It was Big Nev's favourite, so they're all expecting you to like it."

"Ew. What was the first thing about you that made them realize that you're not Big Harry?"

"I hate flying."

"You do?" He glanced down at the winged shoes… Potter’s gaze followed his.

"Those are just for decoration. Heights make me sick up worse than apparating. It was Christmas when I came through, like I said, and James - he's Big Harry's oldest - gave me a brand new broom, and tried me on it first thing, and I got really dizzy from being up high and fell off and broke my leg. Lily - she's Big Harry's daughter; she's a doctor -"

"Healer," Neville corrected automatically.

"That too. Anyway. She fixed me right up, and James said "Could happen to anyone, really; let's try it again," and I said ‘Sod off and die; not in this world _or_ any other.' Al nearly made himself sick laughing. Seriously, I thought he was going to have a heart attack."

"Why would he laugh?"

"Because he's rubbish on a broom too. He’s the only Potter, man or woman, in six generations who couldn't have played professionally. And Big Harry was the best of them all, and no one _ever_ lets him - Al that is - forget it."

"I see your point," Neville conceded. "I still like gardens though. I know Big Nev was - is - a Master Herbologist, but I don't actually mind being the same as him there."

"As long as it's what _you_ want. It'll make Stella happy anyway. None of her kids or grandkids can grow grass. What else do you like?"

"I dunno."

"Oh come on," Potter wheedled. The hard, bitter undertones faded near-instantly, replaced by a dulcet, soft and imploring look. Neville wondered if it hurt his eyes to stretch them that far. "There must be something!"

And despite himself... Neville hesitated.

 _This is your_ holiday _, Longbottom. Your_ holiday, _from your_ life.

_Two-to-five._

_No implications._

_You’ll still fit._

"It's stupid," he said finally. "Only I don't think… I’ve never told anybody before."

"I won't tell. I promise."

"I like writing stories," Neville said reluctantly. "Dad... My dad... Had a lot of Muggle books. Adventure books, and what the Muggles call science fiction and fantasy. I read them a lot. Because they were his, yeah? And I tried writing a bit of one once, and it was fun. Rubbish, probably, but it was fun. So I do that sometimes. Besides Mum and Dad and saving the world, it's why I came here, really. So when I go back, I can write stories about what happens here. Because things won't be the same here, right, as they will be there, so it will sound like a story, and I can just... Change the names."

Harry Potter stared at him, mouth half-open and genuinely enchanted. The change it made in his appearance was _astonishing -_ so astonishing Neville actually went over dizzy with it a moment.

"That's _brilliant_ ," Potter said, and bounced on the edge of the tub. "I've never met _anybody_ who writes stories! Well, news stories, yeah, but they're all rubbish. Will you write one down so I can read it?"

"I dunno. I've never shown anybody them before, like I said."

"I won't tell anybody," Potter coaxed. "Pleeeeeeeeeeeease Nevvy?" He actually, _actually,_ tilted his head and rested it on Neville's shoulder, blinking up at him pleadingly. Neville rolled his eyes at him. Potter sniggered and sat up, but he still looked brightly hopeful.

"I'll think about it," Neville said, reserved. "And...." He poked him. Hard. It was abominably rude, he knew, and Gran would have yanked his ear for it, but there it was. "Do _not_ call me _Nevvy_ . Only it's bad enough that I have to put up with _Neville,_ isn't it?"

"What's wrong with Neville?"

"It's a dead stupid name." He brightened. "My great-great-great grandfather from Alaska was called Neville too, but all the genealogies list him as Neil. Can we tell everybody here I'm called Neil? Do you think that would help them in telling the difference?"

"Abso _-lute_ ly!" Harry Potter said firmly. He held out a small hand. "Wotcher, Neil. I'm Harry."

Neville shook. His plump little hand was cold and sweaty. He was, he suddenly noticed, sweaty all over.

"I can't go down like this!" he said in dismay, looking down at himself. "I'm all wrinkled! And sweaty, and I smell like sick! I can't meet new people when I'm all sweaty and wrinkled and smell like sick!"

"Pfft. They won't care. Just tell them you're ex _pressing_ yourself. We could get away with bloody murder here as long as we told  them we were doing that."

" _I_ care. I'm still a Longbottom," the other boy said with firm dignity. "There are things Longbottoms just don't do, Potter, and one of them is to present yourself in new company wrinkled. It's not _polite_ , and even if I am in an alternate universe now, Gran would expect me to keep up the side there. And I'm _not_ going to let her down, even if she'll never know. Maybe _especially_ if she'll never know. We don't agree on everything, but she hasn't spent all these years teaching me manners and proper etiquette just so that I can save them all for her."

"Whatever makes you happy," Potter said amiably. "I don't know any unwrinkly charms, but they've got lots of clothes for you here. Why don't you take a shower - I'll show you how the taps work - and then we'll dig you something up."

" _HARRY_!"

"HE'S ALL SWEATY!" Potter bellowed down. "AND WRINKLY! LONGBOTTOMS DON'T PRESENT THEMSELVES IN NEW COMPANY WHEN THEY'RE WRINKLY!"

There was a pause.

"Right then," Frankie's voice said. "I'll just put the food on to warm. Is he sicking up?"

"That's not very polite either, is it?" Neville said disapprovingly. "Hmmph. What's his middle name?"

"He's got two. Alistair Augustine. Also, it's Frankie, not Frank. And he's worried, not being not polite."

"Then he should come up and check on me, not shout it out to the whole world like that. FRANKIE ALISTAIR AUGUSTINE LONGBOTTOM!" he roared. "WE DO NOT DISCUSS SICKING UP IN PUBLIC! DID YOUR GRAN TEACH YOU _NOTHING_ ON MANNERS?"

There was a startled silence.

"Great Caesar's ghost," Frankie Longbottom's voice said. "That's bloody creepy, that is. SORRY, POP," he bellowed back up. "IF I TELL YOU THAT I'VE GOT YOUR FAVOURITE RICE PUD HERE WILL YOU FORGIVE ME?'

Neville looked at Potter. Potter grinned and nodded encouragingly.

"I'M NOT YOUR BLOODY POP," he bellowed back boldly. It was odd, Neville thought. He hadn't felt the urge to fake a stutter once since he'd arrived. Perhaps he'd lost it in transit. "I'M HIS ALIEN CLONE FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE! ANOTHER _BLOODY BUGGERING_ UNIVERSE! ALSO..." He steeled himself. "RICE PUD IS _SHITE_!"

Harry Potter fell back in the tub, giggling wildly as the astonished silence sounded from below.

"You're brilliant, Longbottom," he said, wiping his eyes as he sat up. "Alright. Taps. Shower. Press this button there. Turn clockwise to get the temperature you want, and press the middle section here to get bubbles."

"HOW DO WE FEEL ABOUT CHOCOLATE SILK PUDDING?" Frankie called. "OH ALIEN CLONE OF MY EXALTED FATHER?"

"Chocolate silk pudding?" Neville mouthed. "What's that?" Potter just offered him two enthusiastic thumbs up.

"SOUNDS BLOODY BRILLIANT," he called, and added conscientiously and not a little compulsively. "THANK YOU, SIR!"

"Alien Clone of his Exalted Father," Potter sniggered. "Heh. That's wicked. Wait, your middle name is Frank, right?"

"Yeah?"

"ACEF," he said. "The initials. Ace F. Longbottom. Ace Longbottom. Never mind Neil, you're Ace."

"I don't really think I look like an Ace." The small round boy looked down at himself doubtfully. "Do I?"

"So? I don't look like a hero, but they still say I'm one. And if that's true, and it's actually _not_ about what you look like but what you do, you might as well make it work for you straight up."

Neville thought about _that._

"Alright," he said. "Get out, then. I need a wash."

"Get _out_ ?" Potter repeated, and mimicked... "Only _that's_ not very polite, is it?"

"I'm not leaving _you_ behind in two-to-five, am I?" Neville hesitated, then said a bit diffidently... "I mean.. Only we might as well begin as we'll go on, right? In all ways, like you said? And if we're going to be mates here, we'll be mates at home... Right?"

Harry Potter just grinned at him. It was wide and sweet, and the very devil, as Gran would have said, Neville 'Ace' Longbottom reflected, shone through the mischievous spark in those almond-shaped green eyes.

"What do _you_ like?" Neville asked him as the smaller boy turned to leave the loo. "If it's not what they think it should be?"

"Dragons," Potter said promptly. "Dragons are bloody buggering bollocking _wicked._ Bill Weasley - he's like, really old, almost a hundred fifty, the oldest person in the Weasley family now, but you'd never know it; he's just _cool_ \- took me to the Reserves in Romania last week, and we met all the dragons there. I'm going to learn all about them, and when we go back, I'm going to be a wrangler."

"Wow. Aren't you a Gryffindor."

"That's what they tell me. Doesn't make it true, though. It's my decision in the end, Frankie told me, so I reckon I'll do my research there too, and find out what I want before I go in. And then I'll tell them, or the Hat, or whatever - _that's_ a rubbish way of determining your whole future, by listening to a bloody Hat, innit? Bugger _that_. Maybe I won't even put it on, and just go to the table I want, and if they argue, I'll tell 'em to sod off."

"You _really_ don't like people telling you what to do, do you?"

"You wouldn't either if you were me, once you read the history books here. My future is _mine_ , and that stupid prophecy will be fulfilled by the time we get back, and if other people want to offer their opinions after that, that's one thing, but it doesn't mean I have to listen."

"Prophecy?"

"Rubbish. Forget about it."

"Alright," Neville said obligingly and filed the reference away for examination at a more appropriate moment.  "Only we'll probably already be Sorted when we get back anyway, or Big Harry and Big Nev will be, _as_ us, won't we?"

Potter just waved an airy hand at that... Neville had to stifle the urge to smack his head. It was bloody weird, he reflected, that it was only when he was finally away from Gran that he was beginning to understand her. He sat on his own hands, firmly.

"We'll _have_ to go where they've been sent, Potter," he said. "0r we'll give the game away. And we don't know what's going to happen while we're gone anyway, do we? They could _change_ stuff. A lot of stuff. Little stuff, that makes big differences. If there's one thing I know from reading Dad's books, it's that if you don't keep an eye on the little stuff, the big stuff gets right whack out of your control."

"I guess we'll find out when we get back, won't we? In the meantime..." Potter pointed to the bath. "Take your bleeding shower, Ace."

"Sod off and die."

"Well done, you! Now slam the door at me."

" _What_?"

"Slam the door. You're Ace: you swear and you slam doors."

"I do not slam _doors_. I am Longbottom of Longbottom, and my Gran taught me better than that." He closed said door gently as Potter trotted off, his shoes squeaking like mice, then opened it again immediately.

"If they don't get to tell us - _me_ \- what to do," nine-year-old Neville 'Ace' F. Longbottom said boldly. "Neither do you. _For_ the record."

"Well done, you," the Boy-Who-Apparently-Lived-to-Rebel said approvingly again. "Now move your blooming arse. I'm hungry."

"Now move your blooming arse, _please_."

"Uh?"

 _"Manners_ , Potter!  Do they not have them here, because you may have been raised by Muggles, but in our version of Wizarding England, they're a Thing. If you want something from me, say please."

"Oh for... You're not only channeling your Gran, you're channeling Astra."

"Which Astra?" he called around the first steaming rush of the water. Big Nev had given him the complete run-down on the family tree, of course, but there were at least four specific options there that he could recall, across three generations and multiple branches of the extended clans.

"Astra Malfoy. Big Nev's granddaughter. Frankie's daughter. She's married to Big Nev's boyfriend's great-grandson Pollux Malfoy. She's brilliant. Teaches Arithmancy at Hogwarts, and was head of the team that worked on that part of The Project."

"Big Nev's... _What_?" The tap turned off abruptly.

"Granddaughter."

"No. The other part."

"What...Oh. Boyfriend?"

"That bit, yes."

"He wasn't exactly his boyfriend," Potter said. "It was Solace between Malfoy and Longbottom after the war. Big Nev and his wife couldn't have children, so they were going to adopt Draco Malfoy's second grandchild as their Heir, but then they had Frankie, so they didn't need to after all, but it worked out alright anyway because Astra married Draco's great grandson Pollux.  And Draco's wife had died, and he was lonely, Frankie says, but he didn't want a girlfriend or a wife because Astoria, that was his wife, had been his One True Love, so he and Big Nev had a Gentlemen's Arrangement instead. It's all very weird, but then, this is a really weird world, never mind the magic. Do they have Solace back where we come from?"

"Yes." The water turned back on. "They do. Draco Malfoy? Are you talking about Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy's son?"

"I guess? Why, have you met him?"

"A few times, yeah." Sage-scented bubbles drifted out of the shower and into the main bedroom. "Bit of a git, really."

"Oh. Well, it doesn't mean that _you_ have to be his boyfriend. I mean, you're not Big Nev. And things will be different there, anyway. They might even not need Solace."

There was a snort at that.

"Oh, they need it alright." The taps turned off again. "Towel?"

"Cupboard."

"Thanks." There was more scuffling, and Neville emerged wrapped in a dressing gown, going to the closets and flicking through briskly. "No, no, no, no... Bloody _hell_ ; what _is_ all this?! These are all..."

Neville turned as a choked sound, half between a laugh and a gasp, sounded. A man of late middle years (in Wizarding terms) was standing in the doorway. Of medium height and sturdy build, he was clad in jeans and an ancient once- bright orange jumper, with white-streaked hair, dark brown eyes, and a cheerfully plain face. The resemblance between them, at this age before Neville's own face had matured and chiselled out, was as astounding as it was unexpected. The two gazed, amazed, at each other.

"Hullo?" Neville said uncertainly.

The man cleared his throat.

"Hullo," he said. "Made it through alright then, did you?" .

"Yeah. I reckon... I think... Yes?"

"Christ," Frankie Longbottom said. "Christ _Jesus_." He sat on the sofa and buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Potter looked panicked. Neville shifted from foot to foot, his small round face anxious. At last, Frankie took a deep shuddering breath and lifted his face.

"Sorry," he said. "Sorry. It's just... It all got away from me a minute there." He looked fatigued, and exhausted with sorrow, and suddenly Neville remembered that if he was here, that meant that at sometime within the last few hours, Big Nev - or his mortal body, at least, had gone On. He opened his mouth to stutter out one of the standard, socially acceptable and  traditional platitudes that Gran  had taught him were appropriate whether one was offering or accepting condolences in The Event Of...

**_Sometimes I wonder if I'd do the same things I did, if I were to go back and be nine again. Keep it private, that is. Knowing how it would end up for me. And what differences it might have made, not just for me, but for everybody._ **

_They should know,_ Neville Frank Longbottom decided  in a burst of sudden, razor-sharp clarity. _They should_ know. _Potter was right. Some things should be private. But if they’re going to write history books about him anyway…_

 _They should get them right. They should get_ him _right._

_They should know the truth._

"If I got here," Neville said, sitting beside his counterpart's son. "He got there. I wouldn't have got here, if he hadn't got there." He patted the denimed knee awkwardly. "Don't worry. He's having fun, I promise."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because he's doing exactly what I would be doing, if it were me. If I were him, replacing me. A grown wizard, with all that power he told me he had? Gone back a hundred and twenty-seven years in time? There's only one thing worth going back _for_ in his head, never mind Mum and Dad and saving the world and all. Worth going _through_ all of this for, from his end of things."

“And what would that be?"

"He's gone to Azkaban to kill Bellatrix Lestrange."

* * *

 

Potter actually squeaked. Frankie Alistair Augustine Longbottom removed his hands from his face and stared at his father's nine-year-old counterpart.

" _Sorry_?" he said incredulously. "Only... _What_?"

"He's gone to Azkaban to kill Bellatrix Lestrange," Neville said again. "She's still alive, at home. Nobody's done her yet. And he's a bear, right? His Animagus form? He told me that."

"Yes."

"Then he'll  go there, all done up with magic so no one sees him, and will go to her cell and eat her. Or chew her up, maybe: bits of her at a time, and spit her out, and make the rest of her live till she dies." He meditated on that. "Yeah, that would be good. Better. Maybe her arms? Her wand hand, definitely. We'd definitely go for that one first. She's left-handed, and the Dark Mark was there. I remember that. You think I wouldn't, right, but I do. I was only sixteen months old, and I remember lots. It was the Obliviation they did on me. I read about it, because I was remembering things I didn't think I could remember, and it says that neural paths in babies are a bit..." He wiggled one plump little hand as Frankie stared at him, shocked. "Sometimes there are _effects_. We - Big Nev and me, we talked about it when he came to me. We reckon maybe in our case... It did a bit of the opposite of what it was supposed to do. Brought out the memories, instead of erasing them. Actually,” he said scrupulously, and not a bit recklessly. If he was going to tell The Rest, after all, he might as well Get The Thing Done _Properly._ “We remember everything. About everything.  Everything we read, everything we hear… It just... sticks. The Obliviators really did bollocks it all up, yeah?  I reckon it’s not _all_ bollocks, though,” he added thoughtfully. “It means I could bring all of Dad’s books with me, without the bother of the pages. Oh, and I got a good laugh when he told me that no one here ever wondered how he got both his Masteries and all his degrees from Oxford so easily when the main thing people remembered about him from Hogwarts was that he had to write lists so that he’d remember to put his robes on in the morning. I do that too, only mostly it’s lists of the things I remember that I’m not _supposed_ to remember.”

Potter stood stock-still, looking from one to the other. Frankie’s face was white with utter shock.

"Dad... Remembered _everything?_ _You_ remember everything? _Everything_? _"_

"Yes. If you’re talking about That Night, though…  Yes _and_ no. We didn't _look_ ," his small guest said a bit primly. "Not past the arm, and the Mark. But we heard it, yeah. In _detail_. She described what she was doing. As she went on. She did it up like lessons. And we remembered, and that’s how I knew he was really me. We compared class notes.”

There was a dire silence.

“Have you ever wanted to try any of what you remember, Neville?” Frankie said, very, very softly indeed.

“No.” Neville shifted a bit. “It’s not… No. But we were _little_ ,” he said a bit plaintively. “ _Really_ little. And accidental magic… Only you don’t really control it, do you? It’s instinct. A reflection of your _feelings_. And remembering something like that. You feel… A lot. And if you remember what feeling like that can do -  _did_ do… You just... keep it private. Because some things, when you say them… Even if you don’t really understand them... You can’t help but _mean_ them. And with some spells, she said that’s all you need. _Intent_. And what would have happened if we’d done something, something we shouldn’t have been able to do, something that we shouldn’t even _know_ about,  and they looked, and _saw?_ And saw that we _remembered_ , and thought it was the way we _are_? _Naturally_?"

"Harry," Frankie Longbottom said. "Go downstairs, please. Close the door behind you, and tell everyone we'll be down in a bit."

Potter went, wordlessly. The door closed. The man and the boy remaining looked at each other.

"You know what happens," Frankie Longbottom said softly again. "Don't you, Neville, when you repress your magic?"

"It's Ace. From what you said: Alien Clone of your Exalted, with F as the middle initial, from Father and Frank. And yeah," Neville said as Frankie snorted in startled surprise. "I reckon I do. It gets mad, till you _go_ mad, and become an Obscurial. But Longbottoms don't become Obscurials. It's ungentlemanly. We just wait until we're old enough to control it all properly, and then we let it out. As bears and things. And then some of us travel to different worlds so that we can find another Bellatrix Lestrange and chew her up."

"So you really think that's why Dad really went?"

"Yeah. No, I _know_ . Mum and Dad are his gift for me. But Bellatrix... He asked me straight up if he could do her, because it was his unfinished business. That someone else did her here on his world, and it’s his biggest regret. So I said he could do her on my world, as my gift back to _him_. He waited a long time, but some things are worth waiting for, yeah? And working for? And when he’s finished her..." Neville hunched his shoulders. “Maybe it’ll be finished for him. For both of us. And then he can be ready to go On. Because he’ll have Got The Thing Done.”

Frankie said nothing more, just ruffled his hair and heaved himself up. "Alright. What were you looking for when I came in?"

"Uh? Oh.” Neville revived a bit at that, obviously relieved for the distraction. “Clothes. Those are all Muggle things. Gran wouldn't like them."

"Nomaji," Frankie corrected. "They're not Muggles now, they're Nomaji. Singular Nomaj, as in No Magic. It's considered more precise, and more to the point, less derogatory. Do you think _you'd_ like them?"

"No," Neville said honestly. "Gran can be ... Gran... But we don't disagree on everything."

"Alright." He shuffled through the closet, and pulled out a pair of hangers. Neville examined his offerings, and disappeared into the loo again. There was the rustle of fabric... A minute passed, and another, and he appeared, neatly combed and straightening his white shirt and neat blue jumper over his wool trousers and short, stylish-a-hundred-thirty-years-ago robe.

"Neville?"

"Mm?"

"I really do reckon you should see a Mind Healer while you're here," Frankie said gently. "I know what you're going to say, believe me, Harry's said it all already, but honestly..."

"It's okay," Neville reassured him. "I'm used to Mind Healers. Healers of all sorts. Not for me, but for Mum and Dad. And I'm only nine, and only, that's another reason  I think Big Nev he said that he'd do Bellatrix for me. I mean, he wants to anyway, but he's grown up, so it's different for him. And Gran wouldn't want me to do it, even it is Bellatrix Lestrange, but it does need to be done now, doesn't it? Not just because she's evil, but because it would be really bad if You Know Who came back and she was still alive."

"So you're not going to argue with me?”

"No. Big Nev is doing her, but that still leaves me being mad all the time, and not being able to do anything with it." The round little shoulders hunched. "I wish I could stop remembering, but I can't. If I can't, it'd be nice to stop being mad all the time. Only it gives me _really_ bad stomach aches."

"I'll just bet it _does_ ," Frankie Longbottom said feelingly, and heaved himself up. "Alright. First things first, we take you downstairs and Lily- that's Big Harry's daughter - will give you a checkup. And then you should have some dinner. And then we'll sit down and figure everything else out. Together. Do you need to sick up again first?"

"No. I'm good, I think."

"Brilliant." He offered him his hand. Neville shook his head.

"I can do this," he said firmly. His voice didn’t tremble even a little... Gran, he thought, might have been proud of him for that. "I _can_ do this. I _can_."

" _We_ can," Frankie corrected, and as they went down the familiar hall to the familiar staircase and down the familiar staircase - "So you're called Ace? Or you want to be, while you're here?"

"No. No, I don't think so. I thought I'd like to be, when Potter said it, but... No."

"Then what?"

"Longbottom. Just... Longbottom. I don't care what the world is. Where I am. In my world, where I'm from... Where I _belong_ ... I _am_ Longbottom of Longbottom, and that won't change, no matter what.  I'm visiting here, on..." He struggled for the word. "On a military _mission,_ yeah, as a representative of _my_ House on my _world_ ; as the _Head_ of that House, so it's only proper that they call me that." He squared his round little shoulders. "It's only appropriate. And if they don't like it..."

"Yes?"

"They can bite my bloody buggering bollocking arse," Longbottom of Longbottom declared recklessly. "If Potter doesn't want anybody defining him... _I'm_ not changing who I already _am_ \- not for anybody."

"Fantastic." They rounded the bend in the stairs. "You really don't like rice pud?"

"Don't make me turn you over my knee, Frankie Alistair Augustine. I _will_ do it."

Frankie bellowed with laughter. "Can _I_ call you Ace anyway? The acronym considered?"

"You may," Longbottom said grandly. "I don't suppose your father taught you how to brew a proper cup of tea?"

"That would depend on how you like your tea, wouldn't it?"

"Properly brewed. Frankie?"

"Yup?"

"What's with Potter's clothes?"

"He's never had any that belonged just to him, only cast-offs, so we're letting him choose all of his own while he's here. Why? D'you want something like?"

"Oh. And no. Only, they are not," the nine-year-old said disapprovingly. "Very _subtle_ , are they? That's fine for a Potter - I've read his grandfather Fleamont's biography - but Longbottoms have an entirely different sort of reputation to maintain."

"Sounds dead boring," Potter said, appearing. "Alright there, Ace? Only we're all..." He stopped in dismay looking him over. "What are you _wearing_?"

"Clothes. Take a good look; these are the styles I'm sure that you'll be rejecting on principle once we go home."

"You sure don't sound nine," Potter said doubtfully. "Are you sure you're not like, forty, and just small like me?"

"No. But if you've decided to be who you want to be, I'm going to be who I've been all along." He turned as a lovely older woman with short, ash blond hair appeared. She wore a light floral dress and a open green robe over it.

"Frankie, where... Ah." She looked down at the small boy before her. "Wow. You really do look exactly like Dad when he was your age, don't you? I don't suppose you like Herbology too?" It didn't sound terribly hopeful.

"Yes," Neville said. "As a matter of fact, I do." He held out his hand. The woman took it, bemused. He bowed over it properly, brushing it with his lips as he'd practiced so often and reluctantly with Gran. "Longbottom of Longbottom, at your service."

She smiled down at him.

"Stella Greengrass Longbottom," she returned. "Mr. Baggins."

"Erhm?"

"This is the story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected," she quoted. Neville gazed up at her, astonished and delighted, his little round face quite unguarded with it.

"I'll wrangle the dragon for you," Potter offered as he sat on a stool and spooned rice pudding straight from the basin. "At the end. Dragons are _wicked_. I reckon from the description there that Smaug was a Chinese Fireball. They're brilliant, Chinese Fireballs. Do you know that Hungarian Horntails are intelligent as people? They just rubbish up their abilities for their own protection."

"Do they really? Wait, you've read 'The Hobbit'?"

"Course." Potter dipped his spoon again, and sang. His voice was light and sweet. Neville, remembering the cold, dangerous look of irritation that had slipped up in the loo, was impressed. Potter's voice didn't match it at _all_. He wondered if he sang a lot, to distract people there. He would have done, he thought. " _Far over Misty Mountains cold... To dungeons deep and caverns old... We must away ere break of day... To seek the pale, enchanted gold_...' Ace here writes science fiction stories," he informed Frankie and Stella. "He came here so he could get inspiration for his break-through novel."

" _Potter_!" Neville said in exasperation. "That was supposed to be a _secret_!"

"From Frankie and _Stella_?"

"It's alright," Stella reassured Neville. "We won't tell anyone. On the other hand, if someone bothers you, you can look at them disapprovingly and tell them that if they keep it up, they won't get to be in your book."

"Right. Though I think this calls for different tactics. You keep this up, Potter, and I _will_ put you in the book. Yes, ma'am. I love Herbology. Or gardens, anyway; they're all I know about it right now. Big Nev said that you work in Brazil, right, regrowing the rainforests?"

"He told you about me?"

"Yes." He screwed up his courage, and stood on his toes, kissing her cheek. "That's from him." Stella Greengrass Longbottom touched her cheek as she smiled down a little at him with wet eyes.

"Harry's right. You don't sound nine at all," was all she said.

"Gran doesn't approve when I sound nine," Neville confessed. "Though maybe it's just being away from Uncle Algie? He's so stupid he can make other people stupid just by standing next to them."

"Ah yes," Frankie said. "Uncle Algie." It was rather grim. "We've heard all about _him."_

 _"_ Is he rubbish too?" Potter wanted to know, looking up. "Like Uncle Vernon?"

"No. He's a Longbottom. Longbottoms aren't rubbish. He's just a great bleeding arsehole. Also, a complete nutter. Gran says that she'd say he was born that way, but it would just give him an excuse. I wouldn't worry about him," Neville reassured Frankie. "Big Nev knows where I keep my supply of powdered looberries."

"Looberries?" Stella asked, interested.

"You don't have them here. We checked. They're used for digestive difficulties and dissolve perfectly in tea. Gran taught me how to make tea when I was six, and now it's my - well, his - job. Big Nev's. Every time Uncle Algie starts going on too much now, I just..." He waved vaguely. "Gran says to let what he says go in one ear and out the other, but this way, he gets it in one _end_ and out the other. I reckon she knows too," he added thoughtfully. "Because I've never run out. Maybe she keeps my supply going because it displays cognitive initiative?"

"She sound brilliant. D’you reckon I'll get to meet her when we get back?" Potter asked eagerly before their astonished guardians could reply. "Only I've never met a real Gran before. Well, here yeah, but not on our world. And can you tell me where you buy those berries? I reckon I'd just love to send some choccies to Dudders with _those_ in there. He won't even care that he doesn't know who they're coming from; he'll eat them anyway. Only he does that, because I reckon he's like your Uncle Algie, even if you don't know enough about Uncle Vernon yet to compare. There's not just that much _to_ know about Dudders, only that he's not just rubbish, he's got rubbish for _brains_." He punctuated that last with an emphatic spoonful of pud.

"Add it to your list. Come on, Harry," Frankie said. "Party's waiting. A small one," he added hastily at Neville's alarmed look. "Immediate family only. Owl's gone out that you got here safely, but we'll ease you into things."

He nodded. Stella offered him her hand. He ignored it, and offered her his arm instead.

"Got your pocket handkerchief there, Mr. Baggins?" she inquired as she took it. Neville patted his shirt pocket at her reassuringly, under his robe. "Excellent. Shall we?" Potter's shoes sounded a loud obnoxious flare of trumpets at that.

"Gryffindor," Neville Longbottom muttered at the other boy. Harry Potter just crossed his eyes at him and stuck out his tongue, loaded now with half-chewed rice pud, as he hefted the salver in his arm and followed them out.


	4. Prophecy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope you all enjoyed this side-adventure! Don't kill me! :)
> 
> Thank you all so much for the lovely comments. You rock!
> 
> xoxo BlueMaple

_Potter's Tower_

_Longbottom Manor_

_Two Days Later_

 

The first thing he planned to do when he got home, Neville Longbottom reflected as he perched on Potter’s bed and tried to ignore the enormously hideous, multi-legged hairy demon now sitting on the other boy’s head and playing conkers with his nose, was to ask his parents and Gran if they could add Potter’s tower to Longbottom Manor.

“Big Harry put it in for me,” Potter had told him as they'd mounted the exquisite spiraled staircase to his bedroom half an hour earlier. “From the outside it looks like any other tower, but when you reach the top floor… It’s magic. And it’s all keyed to my magical signature, set when I put my foot on the first step the first day. Nobody can come up but me, not without an invitation, not even the house-elves. It’s _wicked._ ”

“Gran would really like these stairs,” Neville noted as they climbed. “She likes spirals. Spirals that go up, anyway. She says the only thing at the bottom of the ones that go down is madness and despair, and that’s bollocks.”

“Your Gran says bollocks? Really? Only I thought she was polite!”

“She is. And no, she does not say bollocks. She says self-indulgent and _means_ bollocks. It’s just pronounced differently for her.”

“How can you tell if it’s going up or down, though?” Potter wanted to know as they passed the second level. There was a small library there, and a quite ridiculous loo. The bathtub was big enough to swim in, and the shower was a miniature waterfall complete with tropical plants. “The spirals, I mean? They go both ways, when you’re in the middle, anyway.”

“I asked my godmother that once,” Neville mused. “She says it’s a matter of subjective perspective.  Madness and despair are largely defined by subjective perspective, she says, so labeling them as such when you're in the middle of things is a personal choice. Also, that the shortest distance between two points is around the rules.”

“Uh?”

“Slide down the banister,” he translated. “And avoid the spiral and stairs altogether. It’s a lot more fun any way you look at it, and if you crash, you’ll take the buggers waiting at the bottom with you. Or land on top of them anyway, and get your first licks in.”

“Can I tell my Mind Healer that? It sounds just like the kind of rubbish she’d like to hear. Wait, your godmother says buggers?”

“She pronounces them differently when people who care are around, but yeah. She’s brilliant. And it’s not rubbish. It’s Slytherin. Specially the part on landing on top of the buggers and getting your first licks in.”

“And what’s the difference between that and Gryffindors?”

“Strategic planning,” Longbottom of Longbottom said succinctly. “And trajectory, so the first lick is the only one you’ll need. Also, polyjuice potion, so no one knows it’s you if it all goes to bollocks.”

“Cle _ver!_ ” Potter had said admiringly.  They'd emerged at the top of the tower then, and Neville  had stopped in his tracks, eyes widening hugely as he looked around. The room was circular, glassed all round with only thin iron frames defining the outer parameters of the pale wood floors… There was a huge bed in the middle, done up with in blue with magically shifting, rather beautiful runes in all different alphabets, and at the head was a gigantic, ceiling-high terrarium stuffed with more strange and exotic layers of plants. Thick dark earth lay a good six inches deep on the floor of the case, and in the middle of it all, Neville could see the end of what looked like a small, genuine rotting log. Potter grinned at him with fat, proprietary pride as he went over to squint in. Neville just turned around in awed delighted circles again.

“Innit brilliant?”  Potter said, and quite unnecessarily - “It looks like stone on the outside, but when you look out, it’s all glass! It’s like there’s no walls at all! Well,” he temporized, unnecessarily again. “There are.  You can see them by the frames there. But that’s just so I know where the floors end.”

“It’s beautiful,” Neville told him sincerely. “Didn’t you tell everybody you hate heights, though? That they make you sick up?”

“Heights as experienced from a broom make me sick up. This is different. This isn’t about flying, it’s about seeing out when nobody else can see in. It’s a _metaphor._ For my _life_.”

“You let me in.”

Potter just waved him off at that. “Big Harry told me you were alright,” he said. “And you write stories. Original stories, with their own endings. I like a man who can write his own endings, even when the names are just swapped out. It’s a metaphor again,” he added kindly at the bemused look. “For our _situation_. You do know what a metaphor is, right?”

“Yes,” Neville said, and promptly screamed when Potter stuck his arm through the terrarium, deep into the miniature jungle within, and came out holding that six-inch hissing demon. “AHHHHHHHH!”

“He’s not going to hurt you, Longbottom.” Potter petted the… thing… with a grubby fingertip, and actually cooed. “Oo’s ‘Arry’s ickle baby? Scuttle is! You’re so pwetty! Did ‘oo find the nummy cwickets I put in for 'oo? Mm, cwickets! I bet 'oo did! You’re the best hunter in the whole jungle, yes 'oo  _are_!” The thing hissed at him happily.

“What _is_ that?”

“A spider. A rune spider. Well, most people call them Brazilian wandering spiders or banana spiders, but Magicals call them rune spiders because their legs make the only non-magical wand core in existence by acting as runes, not by providing magic, but channeling your own magic back through themselves in a double-powered, self-powering loop. They're also called St. Michael’s spiders because they get rid of the real rubbish wandering the floor of the jungle, and the wands they make are the best for casting defensive magic in an offensive situation. St. Michael the Archangel, defender in battle.  They’re _wicked_ , and they’re where Big Harry got his inspiration for bio-runes, way back when.” He nuzzled the spider with his nose, and set it on top of his head. It kneaded his black, gold-tipped hair enthusiastically, burrowing in. He crossed his eyes up at it. They made,” Potter said as the rune spider reached down and shoved its left forelimb up his nose. “All this _possible_ . That’s what runes do. Runes make everything possible. Don’t tell anybody I said that, though. They’ll get all excited, and that’ll _really_ be bollocks.”

“Are they poisonous?” Neville ventured, his alarm not significantly abated.

“Of course they are.  Rune spiders are the most poisonous spiders alive. Scuttle’s not, though. Rune spiders are only dangerous if they’re upset, and Stella laces his crickets with a calming draught and a cheering draught, _and_ a venom repressant, just to be on the safe side.” He flopped down on the floor and let the thing crawl around his head. Neville edged around the wall and clambered up on the bed. Scuttle popped out of Potter’s hair and waved at him. His left forelimb was fine, but the right seemed to be missing.

“Is he hurt?”

“No. Well, he’s broken, but he’s not in pain. Not anymore, anyway. Stella found him hiding  in the log there, in Brazil again, when she was picking phosphorescent mushrooms. He wouldn't have lasted another day, she said, so she brought him home for me. They’re great luck, she says, even the ones with only seven legs.  Poison as anything, like _I_ said, but Scuttle would never bite me, would you, Scuttle?” Potter petted the hideous head with a grubby fingertip again. The spider hissed at him happily. “We have an _understanding_. When I go home, I’m going to take him to visit the Dursleys under the invisibility cloak James told me I’ve got waiting for me there, and put him in their cookie jar. Treats for him, a laugh for me, and lots of pants-wetting all around for them. It’ll be brilliant.”

Neville shuddered a bit, but nodded obligingly.

“Where are all your clothes and things?” he asked, looking around. “The bed’s not all you’ve got, is it? Only what happened to all the presents you said got for Christmas?”

“No, no. It's not, and I’ve got them alright.” The smaller boy removed Scuttle from his head and sitting cross-legged, set him on his scrawny little knee. “ I keep them in my pockets.”

The other boy offered him an odd look. “Your pockets?”

“I like being able to carry my stuff around with me. Big Harry did it too.”

“Why? I mean, was - is - there a reason?”

"Yeah. He didn’t like Wizard clothes.  They never have enough pockets, the sleeves get in the way when you’re casting tricky spells, and most’ve ‘em make you look a proper git besides. Mostly, though, he told me that he told people he did it because he used two wands and it kept his hands free.”

“But he didn’t?”

“No” Potter said after a moment. “Well, yes, that too.” He got to his feet again, and busied himself settling Scuttle in the terrarium again. Neville waited. Even after only two days, he was beginning to be able to read the other boy a little better... There was a lot of waiting if you wanted real answers with Potter, he’d observed. You just had to show that you were willing to wait. Sure enough, his patience was rewarded.  Potter came and clambered on the bed beside him, sitting cross-legged opposite him and hugging a pillow to himself.

“They’re for private stuff,” he said finally. “Like the stuff in your head. That you don’t show anybody. You keep it all in your head so you’re safe. I keep my stuff in my pockets so _I’ll_ be safe.”

Neville waited again.

“They don’t know  I’ve got them,” Potter said. “The magic pockets, I mean. Nobody comes up here but me and who comes with me, and after Stella built the terrarium,  I told the house-elves to come and take everything else away, and not to tell anybody else what’s here and what isn’t now. There was other furniture here before, but I don't need it. It just makes everything cluttered. I don't like things cluttered. I like big spaces, and to keep my important stuff  where only I can see it.”

“Why would you worry if someone else saw it?”

The silence stretched.

“If they can’t see it,” Potter said finally, avoiding his eyes as he had in the loo.  “They can’t take it away. If it’s on me, nobody will find out I have it. Nobody … Nobody ever touches me. Or they didn’t. At the Dursleys. They do here, some, but the pockets are flat, even with everything in them. So nobody knows. They just… Keep stuff safe.” He shifted, and picked at the edge of the pocket, looking smaller than ever. “You won’t tell, will you? Only it’s private.”

“No,” Neville said. “I won’t tell,” and he felt the sudden invisible negligible weight of a ghostly candy wrapper in his hand. “Where’d you get them? The pockets? If nobody knows?”

“They were my Christmas present from Big Harry. He left me twelve pairs of trousers with them, all different colours. Everybody laughed. They thought they were a joke, because all the trousers _he_ ever owned had pockets. They were like, his style. Even when he dressed up, Al says, he just glamoured them. But they weren’t a joke. I reckon the first thing he bought after he Crossed was a pair of trousers with pockets, and all the stuff he  always kept in them here. The same stuff he put in mine. I found it all later. When I was trying them on up here. He left a note in the top pair, the ones I tried on first, explaining. Now…  I reckon he’s probably wearing his right now, and nobody knows. He’ll just makes them look like everybody else’s, till he’s old enough to tell ‘em all to sod off and die, and then they’ll just think he just wears them because he likes them.”

Neville Longbottom digested that.

“What’s in them? I mean… What did he put in them?” It was a dangerous question, he knew, but…

Potter ripped a thread out of the pillow.

“If you tell me,” Neville tried. “I can help you get stuff to replace the stuff you take out. When we’re at school. It’s easier, with two.”

“Can I show you the note?”

He nodded. Potter pulled out a carefully folded letter. Neville opened it cautiously.

**Dear Harry,**

**Bit weird, all of this, yeah? I reckon if you** **_are_ ** **like me, there are a few things about you that you’ll never want to tell anybody. That’s fine. You don’t have to. If they prod, tell them to sod off and die. I know you think it’s dangerous to mouth off, but trust me, they’re used to hearing it from me, and they’re all bound to get stuck on thinking we’re the same person just because we match, so you might as well begin as you’d like to go on.  I never got the hang of that myself, and it’s easier to get away with if you start when you’re young anyway, so… Go to it. Have fun with it. Have fun with** **_them_ ** **.**

**The family’s alright, but you need to assume that everyone else is a nosy plonker. Think Aunt Petunia and Mrs. Garrett in number nine. The whole bloody world here is Privet Drive for us as far as getting up our business is concerned, so don’t give them a bloody inch to be going on with, mate. Not a half an inch, not even a quarter.  Trust me, they’ll turn it into a leash and drag you around with it for the whole two-to-five you’re here, and by the time you get home, it will be a habit that will be almost impossible to break. So…. Take control of it, right up, and when you get home, it’ll be a habit nobody can break for you. Trust me, no matter how things go, or how much changes, you’re going to need that.**

**I also know a few more things you’ll like. Reckon you think a load of trousers is a rubbish gift, but if you check the pockets of this pair - keep checking them, they’re pretty deep, all of them - you’ll see that they’re full of just what both of us would have liked best at your age. When you have to wash a set, just press the label with HJP sewn in, and the same label on the pair you planning on wearing while they’re cleaned, and all the stuff in the pockets will go to the new pair. If you ever buy more, as you grow, just take the label off the ones you’ve outgrown, and sew it onto the bigger set. Or glue it, or whatever. They won’t fall off, I promise, they’ll never wear out, and as the magic of the pockets comes from the labels, not the trousers, nobody will ever have to cast the extension charms for you, until you learn to do them yourself. There are also two pockets in this pair that are empty, so you can keep whatever you get for Christmas, or pick up along while you’re visiting, in them. Well… Almost empty. The left hand one on the bottom of the leg has my favourite set of wands in them. You can’t take them with you when you go back, but I got them both from Ollivander’s. They’ll still be there when you get there, or should be, on your side, if they exist there. His dad made them a hundred fifty years ago, and they sat there waiting for me till I came in at sixty two. If you go in and he doesn’t bring out anything that looks like these, tell him you hear them singing at you from the third bookcase on the left beside the desk, two in the same box. It’ll be a load of rubbish (the singing bit) but he’ll know which ones you mean, and will bring them out, and there you just might be. Not guaranteed, you’re not all me, I know, but who knows, yeah? It’s worth a try, anyway, and I never had a pair that matched me, or each other better. Even better than my first wand, though I think that’s because when you fight two-handed, your core changes a bit to accommodate the split flow of magic, so you do need a set after that, not just two singular wands that aren’t related.**

Neville looked up. Potter pulled out two long, slim wands, in an almost gold wood, banded in gold. Neville’s eyes widened.

“Those are International Dueling Master’s bands!”

“Yeah. Big Harry was - is - an International Dueling Master,”  Potter said.

“Blimey,” Neville breathed. “Was he really? That’s brilliant! Do they like you?”

“Sort of?  I reckon they know I’m not quite him. Close enough to be going on with, but they’re not in for the commitment. They might decide otherwise once I’m good enough with my left hand for them to realize I’m serious on learning, but I’ve just got started there, so they’re not sure of my commitment to _them_ , as a pair.”  He nodded to the letter. “There’s more on the back.”

Neville turned the page over

 **I’ve got a few things to tell you,** he read. **James, my son, WILL give you a racing broom for Christmas, and will try you on it first thing. If you like it, do NOT let them know. Fall off, try to break something with it, and once Lily’s fixed you up and James says ‘Could happen to anyone, let’s try that one again’, tell him to sod off and die. This will, more than anything else, let them know you’re not me. It will also be a lovely Christmas present for Al. They won’t expect Christmas presents, but trust me, there’s nothing better you can give him at least, than that.  When you go back, Sirius will give you another broom, I’m sure, and if you like actually do like flying, you won’t have any problems picking everything up quickly. If you don’t like it, and he asks why you’re rubbish there suddenly, tell him it's probably because you inhaled too many fumes in potions class and it’s throwing you off. He’ll accept that in a minute, if only because it’ll give him a reason to blame Professor Snape for deliberately sabotaging you. Just nod and smile at that. With those two, there** **_is_ ** **no point in arguing. Then… I dunno. Bribe Peeves to throw something at your head, and when you wake up…  Even slight concussions can throw all sorts of things off permanently. Just remember to droop and drag around a bit when they tell you you’ll never fly again. Woe. Tragedy. Sad sighs. Quiet sniffles in corners: martyred and brave when confronted, ‘no, no, it’s nothing, I’m sure life will be worth living again one day.’ Big diamond tears with that bit: singular ones if possible. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones that Mrs. Beaton, the librarian at the primary, used to soothe away with those truly fantastic chocolate raspberry cream cupcakes.**

Neville couldn’t help but snigger at that. Potter grinned back.

 **You can trust Neville Longbottom when he gets here with anything. With everything. I’ve talked to my Nev, who’s talked to him, and he told me to tell you that. Nev’s one of the best men I’ve ever met. We don’t talk about it, but he’s the best** **_friend_ ** **I’ve ever had. Most people will tell you that was Ron Weasley, and that’s true too. They were both my best friends.  I just talked about it with Ron, and didn’t with Nev. He wanted it that way. We both did. It was private. A good private, not a bad one, but honestly… if there’s one thing to listen to me on, Harry, it’s this one.  Don’t hide what you and Neville are to each other from anybody, if you become friends.  Don’t let anyone define it. I think if Nev and I had stayed close, in public… Things might have been different. Good different. Like brother-wands-that-work-best-as-a-set different.  If Neville’s even a little bit like my Nev, he will never never in your whole life let you down. He’ll keep your secrets, and have your back, and maybe he’ll give you the Look now and then, because he does that, but he’s always right with it (it’s both bloody reassuring and bloody annoying; his Gran’s the same way)  so just call him a tosser if you like - he won’t take it personally; he doesn’t, or maybe he’s just really good at forgiving - and get on with doing whatever he tells you to do. It’s easier that way. Also. He’s a lot smarter than he lets on. A** **_lot_ ** **smarter. People here will tell you that he started off as practically hopeless and  grew into himself, but that’s a load of rubbish. It took me awhile to understand it, but my Nev was smart from the beginning; he just didn’t want anyone to know. I reckon after all these years I have a few ideas on why, but if Neville’s reasons are the same as Nev’s, they’re his to tell you, just like your reasons for other things are yours. Just make sure he knows you’re someone he can talk to, and the rest will take care of itself.**

 **I’ll be honest, it’s one of the main reasons I’m doing this. Nev and I won’t have long after we do in Riddle, and after I remember everything, to talk on these things, but I intend to bring it up. To tell him what he really meant to me. How I wish things could have been there, and how if I had to do it over - not you, but me - I’d do that much at least, differently. Because I never did tell him. He knew, but I never said it. And if I manage that, before we go On together… That much, of everything I never did finish,  will** **_be_ ** **finished. We’ll go on together, the way we were meant to live, as brother-wands, that work best together as the same set.  Don’t waste your chance there, Harry. You’ll go back, and maybe you’ll be best friends with Ron Weasley, but Neville Longbottom will be your brother. The brother that I know both of us - and Nev and him - always wanted. And nothing, nothing can take that away from either of you unless you let it. So… Don’t. Don’t be afraid to show him this letter. I know… I** **_know_ ** **… You want to.**

Neville shifted a bit. Potter pushed his gold tips out of his eyes and refused to look at him. He returned to reading.

 **If I get back when I’m supposed to, the first thing I’ll do is get Sirius Black out of Azkaban. I won’t be able to stop myself, because I think I’ll just be going back in time. The second thing I’ll do is figure out how to cure Remus Lupin. He’s Sirius’ best mate. That means by the time you get back, things will probably be a bit different than they were for me. I reckon it’ll be a bit hard leaving Frankie - he’s brilliant, they don’t come any better; let me tell you, if they’ve got ‘Longbottom’ as a name, you bloody can’t go wrong, unless it’s Algie, and he’s just wrong, got nothing to do with the name - and Sirius can be a bit much, but remember above all that he loves you.  If there’s anyone in your world to who you are everything, it’s Sirius Black. Just remember, he’s been his own version of a closet with the bloody Dursleys using hs** **_head_ ** **for their closet for ten years, so…. Yeah. We both know how that one goes. I don’t know how much will be different, or who will be different, but I’ll do my very best to find a way to let you know the important bits, to leave you notes on the important bits, before I go On.**

 **I don’t know if you’re interested in Wards, but they were always my favourite hobby. The stuff on them is in the rear left. DO NOT tell anyone but Frankie and Neville and Stella about those. People WILL try to confiscate or steal them for the Greater Good, and they’re yours. Not anybody else’s, but yours. If you want to leave them with somebody when you go, ask Stella to get them to** **_Senhora_ ** **Carlotta-Maria Inez Hernandez de Silva, in San Paulo, Brazil. She’s a great woman, and the bloody best Warder I know. Don’t be put off by the fact that she used to be Supreme Mugwump, she only took the job so there’d be someone there to get people to listen about the lethifold problem. That worked brilliantly, and she retired as soon as it was done and went back to runes. Woman’s got her priorities straight.**

**So, yeah. Tell Stella I said to introduce you, if you like, and to her son Tony. He’s hilarious, and if you want to learn how to use both hands (I highly recommend it, if you start now, and have three years, you’ll be all set by the time you get back), he’s your man. He also has the bloody best Animagus form on the face of the planet. He took after his great-grandmother there. Make sure you go to the loo first, though, if he offers to show you. DO NOT ASK HIM TO SHOW YOU.. It’s not polite, in that part of the world. If someone does offer to show you, though, it’s alright to accept. That means they think of you as a friend. He and Carlotta both know mine, but they won’t expect it of you. South Americans are great that way. They don’t think anybody can replace anybody else, so with them, you’ll just be you.**

**They have a saying in South America. Two of them. The first is what you say when you’re meeting someone, and saying goodbye, because you never know what will happen. The second is what you say to them when you want to be friends with them. The kind of friends who move time and universes for each other. Who cross time and universes for each other. The kind of friend who you can sit in a cupboard with and share your chocolate with, and know that they’ll bring you back chocolate to replace it, without you ever having to ask or them having to ask why, just because they know chocolate makes everything better (though treacle tart is best), and that not all the Dementors live in Azkaban, and that there are some that even Kiss-Off can’t get rid of. Who live in the cupboard in your head, and who know that, no matter what anyone tells you, they never were, and never will be, just Boggarts. The one you say when you meet them is this:**

**_There are none before you and none after you who can replace you. If you are lost, I will not forget you. I will remember you always._ **

**The one you say when you want to show them that you want to be your friend is this:**

**_I will remember your name, if you will remember mine._ **

**There are none before you, Harry James Potter, and none after you who can **replace you. If you are lost, I will not forget you. I will remember you always. And no matter the time, no matter the universe, no matter what comes Now, or  After, or Between... I will remember your name, if you will remember mine.****

**Have a wonderful life, little mate. Have** **_your_ ** **life. And if anyone - _anyone_ \- tries to tell you that you’re destined to be the fulfillment of their interpretation of some goddamn prophecy for their Greater Good just because I was… Tell them that that was my past, not your future, and to get up off their arses and use whatever brains they’ve got to help solve the problems before they get a chance to become disasters. **

**Always yours (but not you!)**

**Harry James Potter**

**P.S. Tell Al I love him, the little bugger. And that I know damned well he fell off that first broom on purpose, and why, and that I was never prouder to call him my son in my life. Except when I was, every day of my life after.**

Neville folded the letter carefully and held it out. Potter took it and shoved his pocket, returning to his pillow. Neville pulled his knees up. They sat quietly in the middle of the bed, in the middle of the tower,  in the middle of the new world, in the new universe, for a long time. Finally, Potter reached into a second pocket and pulled out a Mars bar, peeling it open and breaking it in two, offering half. Neville took it. They nibbled together. When they were finished, Neville reached in his robe pocket and extracted a piece of Drooble’s Best Blowing Bubble Gum, unwrapping it and popping it into his mouth. He handed Potter the wrapper. Potter examined it.

“What’s this?” he asked

“My mum gives me the wrappers,” Neville said. “Every time I visit her. First and third Sundays of the month, two till four. I keep them in a box under my bed at home.”

“Oh.” Potter tucked it carefully away. “I didn’t even know my mum’s name, till I came here.”

“It’s Lily.”

“I know. Now.” He handed his chocolate wrapper back. Neville folded it and tucked it in his trousers pocket, behind his pocket handkerchief.  Potter offered him a small smile.

“What else have you got in there?” Neville asked. “I won’t tell.”

“Everything,” Potter said. “Want to see?”

“Yeah.”

“It’ll take awhile." Potter pulled back a bit and unbuttoned his first pocket. Neville watched in bemusement as he pulled out a stack of maps tied up with a rubber elastic. It was easily six inches thick.

“Floo maps,” Potter explained. “All of Great Britain. With the runes on my feet, and this” - he pulled out a huge bag of floo powder - “I can go anywhere, anytime. And there’s no ward invented yet that can keep me in or out, anywhere.”

_“What?”_

“It’s a secret. I said Big Harry left them for all the Potters who needed them, in the vault. I was the Potter he thought would need them right now. The rest of them won’t get access till after I leave. He made sure of it. All I had to do was step into these footprints of his own feet he’d traced, on a sheet of parchment, and the runes went right on my soles. Nobody knows what they do, not even Frankie or Stella. He left another note, in the pocket with these.” He hauled out a huge pile of binders, that enlarged to full size once on the bed. Neville seized the first one, and opened it. A small blue and white book fell out. He picked it up and examined it.

“The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” he read. “We have this at home too.”

“Do we?” Potter said. “Only I was wondering where that’d got to.”  Neville opened it to the title page and scanned.

“Huh,” he said. “That’s different.” He flipped and scanned quickly. “Well. That’s bollocks, isn’t it? Where’s the rest?”

“What rest?” Potter scrambled over the increasing pile to peer over his shoulders.

“The rest of the story. ‘The Tale of the Three Brothers’. This is only part of it. They didn’t even get the title right, and as for the details…” He flipped pages. “They totally edited all the best bits out! _Tail hair_ of a thestral? What kind of all-powerful magic wand can you make with a _tail hair_  ?”

“Quite a scary one, I’m told,” Potter said. “When it’s combined with elder and created by Death.”

Neville scoffed again. “Try heartstring,” he said. “Of the murdered _King_ of the thestrals, and his hide for the cloak, and his eye for the Resurrection stone.”

_“What?”_

“It’s why thestrals are all bones. No skin. The brothers skinned their king alive, and stole his eye, that’s the empty sockets, and he’s half dead because they gouged out his heartstring for the wand, but put it in the wand, so it’s still beating, just not in him. Like when a Dementor sucks your soul out, it’s still intact, just not in your body, so your body doesn’t die.”

Potter stared at him, appalled and fascinated.

“That’s _rubbish_ ,” he said, and bounced. “Tell me more! No wait.” He rummaged again for a spiral notebook and biro. “Tell it to me, and then you can write it down after so I can read it whenever I want.”

“Alright,” Neville obliged. “Well first off, it’s not even a story, really. It’s the narrative framework for a prophecy. A really old one,  almost two thousand years old, that foretold the end of the world.”

 _"That’s_ rubbish,” Potter said, and paused. “ _Our_ world?’

“In the second part, yeah. The first part foretells the saving of it, and the third leaves things open for interpretation. Before all the parts though, there’s a prequel. Well, a prologue, that ties them all together. And there are still the three brothers, and tradition says that the three parts after the prequel mark three different conclusions to the prophecy I just mentioned, depending on which one of the brothers gets the advantage over the other two. Though that’s a bit confusing too, because in all of them, the first and second brothers' cores combine to…”

“Start at the beginning,” Potter ordered. “With the prologue. And the titles.” He reached into third pocket and hauled out a huge bag of beef jerky sticks, fruit bars, hard-boiled eggs and packets of crackers, several jars of peanut butter, and an entire shop-shelf’s worth of assorted crisps, chocolate bars and  packets of nuts. Neville blinked. Twelve large filled water bottles followed, and several of self-chilling milk.

“What… Maps, books, food, water, floo powder…” He choked as a huge bag of galleons spilled out after the food, covering half the bed. “What the bloody hell is all this?”

“I believe in being prepared. For everything. So did Big Harry. You never know, yeah?” He pulled out a large pack of Muggle light bulbs, three torches, and a triple pack of Muggle batteries. “Also, I don’t like the dark, and sometimes your one bulb breaks on the first day of the month because your great pig-in-a-wig of a cousin knows that’s when you get your new one, and that you won’t get another till the first of the next, and that if he stomps hard enough on the stairs, the bulb in your cupboard will break, and you’ll be stuck in the dark for the next twenty-eight-to-thirty-one-days.  Story?” He selected and peeled a stick of jerky.

“Right, right." Neville collected himself. "Well, there are four titles. One for the prologue, and one for each of the sequels. The prologue’s called “The Tale of the Traveler’. It frames the primary prophecy. The first's called “The Tale of the Egg,’ the second’s ‘The Tale of the Thestral King’  and the third’s ‘The Tale of the Black Phoenix.’"

“I’ve never heard of a black phoenix before,” Potter said around a mouthful of jerky. “Is it a metaphor?”

“No, I don’t think so. And just because you haven’t seen mean it doesn’t exist. My godfather says that facts are not necessarily reflective of truth. Sometimes they’re just there to distort it.”

“Wha’ever.” He bit again. “G’wan.”

“Erhm. Alright.” Neville settled himself. Potter’s emerald eyes shone in anticipation. “‘There once was a Queen who ruled over a great kingdom: a kingdom that formed as perfect a circle as do the earth, moon, and sun. She ruled from the center, from a small ramshackle hut that visitors, once past the threshold, saw a palace as of incomparable beauty and magnificence.’ That’s a metaphor,” he explained. “For the soul inside the body.”

“Gotcha.”

“The Queen had no husband and no children,” Neville continued. “She didn’t mind the lack of a husband, but she would have liked a child or two to keep her company.”

“Oooooh! Don’t you tell Aunt Petunia!”

"Mm. Don’t _you_ interrupt.  One day, a visitor came to her hut, footsore and weary, and she invited him to sit on the bench under her favourite tree, and brought him cool sweet wine and a nice meal, and soap and towels so he could wash in the stream out back.”

“Whyn’t she invite him into the palace?” Potter wanted to know.

“Because he was a stranger. If we’re extending the metaphor, you don’t go showing strangers your soul right away, you have to work up to it.”

Potter selected an apple, bit into it, and chewed at him.

“So they got on very well, and he made her laugh, and he complimented her cooking, and she invited him to stay the night. He was happy to sleep on the bench, only it started to rain, and  that was when she said ‘Oh well, that’s no good, you might as well come in,’ and he did. And he was very impressed with the beauty of her castle, and realized that she was the Queen, and bowed down before her, and she said ‘please don’t, that’s really not what’s important. I liked it better when you were complimenting me on my cooking.’ And he laughed again - he had a very nice laugh, she thought - and said “As you wish, Majesty,’ only he was teasing really, and she laughed too. And it rained without, but the sun shone within, and that’s a metaphor too.”

“I got that bit, yes,” Potter said dryly. “Aunt Petunia found a few metaphors and related under Dudders’ mattress last summer. He said that I must have put them there to get him in trouble.”

“I found Uncle Algie’s,” Neville said. “He told me he reads them for the articles, and paid me ten galleons not to tell Gran.”

Potter sniggered.

“He stayed a week,” Neville continued. “It was a bad storm. And he had to go finally, and kissed her, and said ‘your cooking is as magnificent as your castle', and she laughed and cried a little when he was gone, because he really had been very nice, but then she found out he’d left her a gift. And nine months later, she gave birth to three sons."

“I’m shocked,” Potter said mournfully.  “Really.”

“You’re also interrupting again. Shut it.”

The apple crunched, and the emerald eyes glimmered at him.

“The first son was as fair as the sun,” he continued. “The second was as dark as midnight, and the third was the colour of shadows, which is to say, no colour at all, because shadows have no colour of their own. They’re empty, and only borrow their shape and form from the things around them. And their mother loved them all equally, and when the time came to bestow the kingdom on the eldest, she was so torn that she told them a bit of a lie - that they’d all been born at precisely the same time, so there was no eldest at all. She told them she was going to divide the kingdom into thirds, and they’d each get a third to rule over. At first they agreed, because you can’t flip a coin when there are three of you, and the borders were drawn, and they all went off to their thirds, and that was when the trouble started. Because a third is never enough when it comes to ruling a kingdom, and they threatened war with each other, and that was no good. Their mother loved them, but she’d been trying to solve a problem, not trying to create them, so she called them all home to the palace, and sat them down and said 'This Is Not Acceptable.' And they said “That’s all very well, Mum, but.” And she said ‘No buts. I have made a decision. You will all go to your rooms, and when you come down for breakfast in the morning, I will tell it to you, because right now I just want to smack your faces, and while I'm certain that I would enjoy it, it would not serve the kingdom. Off you go, no dessert for any of you.” And off they went, grumbling, and their mother made herself a cup of tea, and thought how if she ever met up with her sons' father again, she would have something to say to him about not calling afterwards to see how she was doing after such a bad rainstorm.”

Potter laughed outright.

“Eventually,” Neville continued. “She fell asleep by the fire. And while she was sleeping, she had a most peculiar dream. She saw three paths before her, and she took the first, and in the distance as she approached the center, she saw a bridge, spanning a vast sea that shone as with a million stars. She turned back, and followed the second. It led to the same bridge, and when she turned along the third, sure enough… There it was. The third time, though, she approached the bridge - not crossing it or stepping on it, but just before it. And as she drew closer, she saw a traveler on it, and he spoke to her of many strange things. When she woke, she was frightened, but she did not show her fear to her sons when they came down for breakfast. And they sat over their toast and bacon and waited for her to tell them her solution, and after she’d had her tea, she pulled herself together, and Got the Thing Done. She told them of her solution, that they would each go traveling, whether together or apart it was their choice, and find themselves wives. When they found ones they liked, they would all bring them home to her, and she would throw a big wedding, and then they would all go off and make her grandchildren. And the first grandchild to be born would inherit all, for all time, and in the meantime, they could each just rule their bloody thirds and oh yes, look out for each other too, no wars allowed, because there was always that possibility that their own child would inherit everything, and they wouldn’t want two thirds of its inheritance to be a mess.”

“Cle _ver!_ ” Potter said approvingly.

“The three brothers agreed,” Neville said. “And went upstairs to pack their things, and then the first brother turned back, and said to their mum, “Mum, not to put too fine a point on it, but what if we all have children born on the same moment on the same day, like you did with us? These things do run in families, I hear.” And she said “You just go pack your things, and let me worry about that. Your only job is to go find yourself a nice girl. And mind you this, all of you,” she said to her sons. “I know all the tricks. It takes nine months to grow a baby, and if the firstborn grandchild happens to be born before those nine full months after your wedding nights are over, they’re out of the running.”

“Are you sure this is a children’s story?” Potter asked. “Only it doesn’t sound like anything Mrs. Beaton would have put in the Tales for Tots section at our local, I have to say.”

“Would you like me to stop?” Neville asked politely. 

“No, no. Go on.”

“ _Thank_ you. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ she said. ‘I had a very strange  dream last night, and I’m stuck on it, bit of rubbish, but if you all could think on it while you’re away, and come back with what you think, that would be very nice. Only I’ll be running the show while you’re off doing your courting, and I won’t have much free time.’ And they said obligingly, ‘Of course, Mum, tell us,’ and she said “I followed three paths to the end, and turned back on the first two, but on the third, I approached the end and saw a traveler come: a traveler with two faces, and the first face was that of a child, and the second was the face of a man. And the traveler  stood on a great bridge over a sea’s worth of stars: one face facing forward and one behind, and he bore what he called the swords of the Warrior’s Heart in either hand and was  girded about with those of the Fallen. And the traveler said to me: “Across this bridge shall come either salvation or ruin. The ones with the power to vanquish the Lords of Darkness and Blood shall approach:  born to the those who have defied them, children of the seventh month, and the Lords of Darkness and Blood will mark them as their equals, but they will have power the Lords of Darkness and Blood know not. And each must die at the hands of the other, for none can live while all survive. The ones with the power to vanquish the Lords of Darkness and Blood will be born as children of the seventh month.”

Potter froze, teeth sunk half into his apple.

“And the brothers’ mum said,” Neville continued, so caught up in the story that he didn’t notice. “‘That’s a bit vague, yeah, got any explanatory footnotes to be going on with,’ and the traveler said ‘Salvation or ruin. At the hour of the battle where cometh the Army of One, after the Month of Heroes has drawn to a close and the sun has risen over the souls of the Silenced, all that was hidden shall be revealed, and  the Black Phoenix shall ascend over all, and shall burn. And the Dragon Reborn shall descend in wrath, and the Many-Eyed be seen at last, and that which was joined shall too be revealed, even as the bridge is broken and all decided forev...er…”

Neville dribbled to an uncertain stop.  Potter stared at him, apple at his half-open lips.

“What?” Neville said uncertainly. “What did I say?”

“You think that’s funny?” Potter whispered. His voice was half terrified, half shaking with outrage. “You think that’s _funny_?”

“No, I… What did I say?”

“It’s rubbish!” He threw the apple violently. “Say it’s rubbish!”

“What are you.. It’s the _story,_ Potter! It’s how it goes, I…”

“IT’S RUBBISH!” Potter roared, and hurled himself at him, pounding at him. So shocked was he, Neville couldn’t even resist. “YOU MADE IT UP! YOU MADE IT UP! YOU HEARD, HE TOLD YOU, AND YOU MADE IT UP!”

“I didn’t, I didn’t, I swear I didn’t!” Neville struggled. “I swear, I didn’t! I don’t know what you’re talking about, nobody told me anything. OWW! GET OFF! OWWWWW!” He roared in pain as Potter’s small, hard fist crashed into his nose. Startled, Potter froze, and lifted his hand, the blood on it. He stared at the blood, and down at Neville’s face.

“Say you made it up,” he whispered. “Say it’s rubbish.”

“It might be rubbish,” Neville said, into the silence. “But I didn’t make it up. It’s how the story goes.”

Potter moved off of him, and off the bed and stood back.

“Get out,” he said harshly. “Get out. This is my tower. I don’t want you here. We’re not friends, and I don’t want to be. I don’t care what Big Harry said. I don’t want to remember you anymore. Get _out_!”

Neville got up slowly. His eyes welled. His nose hurt badly. He pulled out his handkerchief. The chocolate wrapper fell on the floor between them. They both looked down at it, and looked up. Neville bent painfully and picked it up, tucking it back in his pocket.

“That’s mine,” Potter said harshly again. “Give it back.” In the terrarium behind them, leaves rustled, and rustled again.

“No,” Neville Longbottom said quietly. “I don’t know why you’re so mad, Potter, but… No. If you want it back, you’re going to have to take it. I’m not giving it back. I’m Longbottom of Longbottom, and there are some things we Longbottoms don’t do.” He swiped his nose, not with his handkerchief but with his robe. “We don’t forget anybody. Not on purpose. Never, never, _never._  Some of us are made to forget, but never on _purpose_. And some of us…” He swiped at his nose again, the tears smearing with it. “Some of us _can’t._ I _told_ you.”

He turned, and made his way to the stairs. Put his foot on the first. Looked down the spiral descending.

_Madness and despair._

He turned around.

“Well, go on then,” Potter said harshly, a third time.  “What are you waiting for?”

“For you to say please,” Neville Longbottom said. “I told you. If you want something from me, you have to say please.”

“What?”

“You punched me in the nose. I don’t know what I did, so I don’t know enough to tell you that you have to say you’re sorry for it, but if you want me to go, you have to say please.”

Potter offered him a strange expression.

“Please,” he said finally.

“Please what?”

“ _What,_ what? This is _rubbish_!”

“Please go, or please stay and finish the story. Only you haven’t heard it all, have you, and I’m the only one who knows it. I don’t know what was in it that upset you, but you can’t finish it without me. I know that much.”

“Is that supposed to be a metaphor or something?”

“Bang goes you.” Neville wiped his nose again. “Well?”

Potter snarled, and grabbed the notebook and biro from the pile on the bed.

“Start writing,” he ordered. “While I reload my pockets. Here.” He shoved a bottle of chilled milk at him. “Put it against your face.”

“Thanks.” Neville took it and held it gingerly. “Ow.”

“Oh, stop whinging.” Potter stuffed jerky in his pockets. “Try a great bloody cast-iron frying pan to the head, that’ll give you something to whinge about. Never mind that. Help me put these galleons back in the bag, or we’ll be here all day.”

Neville came over and helped. It took a good half hour, but at last the last of the pile was back in the magic trousers. Potter buttoned the last button firmly. Neville went over and retrieved the spiral notebook and biro, and the chilled milk bottle.

“We have to tell Frankie,” Potter said unhappily, sinking down on the bed.

“About…”

“The story,” he said. “It might be done here, but it’s obviously not at home, is it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You will,” Potter said. “ _Bugger._ I came here so I wouldn’t _have_ to be a hero.” He caught the eye. “Don’t tell me you don’t see it?”

"Erhm. No?”

“Bridge. Sea of stars. Traveler. Two faces, one child, one man. Children of the bloody seventh month, and when’s your birthday again, Longbottom? Any of this sounding familiar at all?”

“We’re not the only people ever born in the month of July.”

“Oh yeah? Name one more.”

“My godfather,” he said. "For one. He was born on July fifth.”

“And who’s your godfather?”

“You Know Who’s general and chief strategist. Or the person You Know Who thought was his general anyway. He was a deep cover spy. Well, not a spy, that implies the other side knows you’re working for them, and nobody but Dad and Gran ever did know about him. Everyone just thought Dad had really good instincts, while my godfather was feeding him information as the chief strategist for the Order of the Phoenix, and he was feeding ours right back, so they could coordinate their efforts in order to minimize losses.  Gran says half of Wizarding Great Britain is probably alive today because of them, and no one on either side has ever suspected a thing. Together they had the great Dark Git snowed from here to bloody Alaska.”

“Huh. Wait, your godfather’s Severus Snape?”

“Who?” Neville looked at him blankly.

“Severus Snape.”

“I know who he is. No. I’m talking about my Uncle Luke. Lucius Malfoy, Head of House Malfoy?”

Potter’s eyes widened. He stared at him.

“Lucius Malfoy?” he repeated. “Your godfather is Lucius bloody buggering bollocking _Malfoy?_ ”

“Yeah.” Neville looked puzzled. “Why so surprised? Wasn’t that in your history books?”

“No. No. Because he was a Death Eater here, Longbottom. A _real_ one! Does Big Nev know that he’s supposed to be all cozy with this bloke?” he demanded.

“Erhm. No? We didn’t discuss it, I just assumed…”

He trailed off. The Alien Clone of the Former Greatest Auror of His Century Or Any Other clutched his black hair.

“You assumed he knew,” Potter repeated. “And he assumed things would be the same. So you didn’t... “ He squeezed his eyes shut. “ _Bugger_!”

Neville sank down on the bed, stunned. Potter sat beside him.

“Alright,” he said finally. “Alright. How close are you, really?”

“Not...Very? We can’t be. Draco - their son - has to be kept out of the know, in case Uncle Luke ever has to go back in. You Know Who can’t know that the Longbottoms and Malfoy are allied. But he and Gran are really close. They  send letters and stuff all the time. Through their house-elves. “

“They didn’t tell Draco, but they told you?”

“Not… Exactly? Gran used to bring books down from the attic. From Dad’s collection. Two or three at a time, to read. I found a letter in a stack she hadn’t looked through yet, right before I was eight, and I read it, though it wasn't about the war. It was a birthday card, from Uncle Luke to Dad. A Muggle one. I was confused, because they were supposed to be on opposite sides, and Uncle Luke wasn't supposed to want to have anything to do with Muggles."

"And?”

"I showed it to Gran. They came over, and explained to me a little bit. That they were friends. That Uncle Luke wasn’t bad, but I couldn’t ever talk about it. In case he had to go back. And I promised I wouldn’t, but this isn’t there, and they said specially, really, I could never talk about it because they had to protect Draco. Because Draco couldn’t know that Uncle Luke was a spy, because You Know Who would check his mind for anything he knew about the years between, if he suspected Uncle Luke was lying to him, or hadn’t been honest with him. And Draco’s a bit of a git, but I don’t want anybody going in his head. People don’t belong in other people’s heads.”

“Mm,” Potter agreed. “So you don’t talk to them now? At all?”

“No. They said it was safest. It was alright, I didn’t really know them anyway. Auntie Niss came over sometimes after that, to babysit me while Gran went out, and we liked each other and had some good talks, but she explained the last time that it couldn’t go on because she has to take care of Uncle Luke and Draco, and the more we talk, the more memories she’ll have in her head if they check her out. And she can hide a few, but not lots. So I said I understood, and I did. And she said after it was over, we’d be a real family, all of us. We’d make it all official.”

Potter sighed.

“Alright,” he said. “Alright. It should be fine. With a lot of luck, it’ll be fine. “ He rubbed his cheek. “Lucius Malfoy, a deep cover agent. Next thing you’ll be telling me Grindelwald was a bloody hero.”

“No, no," Neville reassured him. “He was bad. He’s dead, though, so _that’s_ alright.””

Potter’s head turned at that. Slowly.

“What,” he said. “What.”

“What what? He was killed at the end of his war. In 1945. Professor Dumbledore, he’s the Headmaster at Hogwarts now, killed him in their duel. Didn’t that happen here?”

“No,” Potter said. “No, he defeated him, but he was put in prison. He died much later on, here. During the second war. You know, the one that we're trying to prevent?"

Neville blinked at him.

“D’you reckon it’ll make a difference?” he asked.

“I dunno. I just… Don’t know.” Potter took a deep breath. “If this is different, what else is different? Only they said it was all supposed to be the _same_!”

“I don’t know either,” Neville said. “Do you have any history books here? I can read them and compare them to the ones I read at home. I remember them all. All the ones I’ve read, anyway.”

“Yeah. I got lots. In my other trousers. I’ll get them, but first we have to talk to Frankie. Because something’s gone wrong. Really... _Really_ wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re not supposed to be the ones of us who are _here_ , Longbottom!  The world they picked for the Project was supposed to be the same as _this_ one! They checked it so many times… Something went wrong. _They got the wrong universe!_  And if all these things are different from what they planned, _we’re_ different from what they planned! They planned for certain things, in a certain way; everything had to be exact! And if they’re not… Maybe _we’re_ not! We got here alright, but what if we’re just different enough not to be able to get back?”

“But… Big Nev said we’d _fit_ ! That we’re _squashy,_ till we’re fourteen!”

Potter clutched his hair again. “We have to talk to Frankie,” he said firmly.  “Anything could be happening over there, Longbottom. _Anything_. And we have a bloody prophecy where the _world ends_! This is not _good_!”

“The world only ends in one version!” Neville protested.

“That’s one too many! Come on.” He sprang to his feet and tugged him toward the stairs. “Salvation or ruin, salvation or ruin... We have to tell them. _Now_!”

“Bloody buggering bollocking sodding fucking _hell,_ ” Longbottom of Longbottom said feelingly, and followed the panicked Harry Potter out of the glass tower and down the stairs.

 


End file.
